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THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

BEING SELECTIONS IN PROSE AND 
VERSE FROM THE WRITINGS OF 

FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN 



GATHERED AND ARRANGED 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

LIVINGSTON STEBBINS 



Nous avons donne a penser. 

Wine is like scholarship: it ripens with age; 
and it is best from a fresh-opened jar. The top 
of the wine-jar, the bottom of the teapot, as the 
saying has it. 

— Chinese. 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH <|f COMPANY 

1917 



<6 



t«H2l9l7 



COPYHIGHT, 1917 

Sherman, French &• Company 



©CI,A478125 



5r- 



TO 

MY WIFE 

EDNA STEBBINS 

A RARE JEWEL IN AN 
IMPERFECT SETTING 



INTRODUCTION 

America is truly enough said to be a land 
without culture, which is, I suppose, another 
way of saying that it is a country without 
tradition, inhabited by a people without leisure. 
What leisure some of us do have is for the 
most part unprofitably employed, being too 
little or recently removed, apparently, from 
the stress and strain of the business or occu- 
pation from which it has been wrested to per- 
mit of the contemplative cultivation of the arts 
and graces of life. We shall have to look to the 
children and grandchildren of the present gen- 
eration for the imaginative perception and the 
sesthetic taste which will find in architecture, 
statuary, pictures and literature some of the 
amenities and satisfactions of life, — unless, 
perchance, in the turbulence and unrestraint 
of this swiftly moving time these immediate 
descendants become the " degenerate sons of 
worthy sires," and the development of a real 
American culture be postponed for a few gen- 
erations, — when tradition, too, may come to 



INTRODUCTION 

play its part; until then, sculptors, architects, 
painters and men of letters other than novelists 
must needs remain with little honor in their 
own country as prophets of the nobler things 
yet to be. 

Perhaps it is not a matter of surprise, al- 
though it is of regret, that " the sense of cul- 
ture " should as yet have gained so slight a 
hold upon the life and thought of our Amer- 
ican people. The lack of it is presumably one 
of the unfortunate conditions that seem innate 
in the " fretful fever of freedom " that surges 
through the restless, shifting, unsettled and 
untraditional spirit of our day. In such a 
spirit the contemplative mood, which is so at 
variance with our hurried, over-wrought living, 
cannot survive; yet no culture or philosophy of 
life worthy of the name can be attained with- 
out from time to time an introspective atti- 
tude of mind and heart. Our political think- 
ing is done for most of us by newspaper editors, 
our religious thinking by sensational preach- 
ers ; our ethical and cultural thinking could be 
stimulated by our essay writers if we would 
give them a fair chance. We are, however, 
what might be called a one-handed country. 

There can, for instance, be counted on the 
fingers of one hand the American periodicals 
that give competent, scholarly book reviews. 



INTRODUCTION 

The religious papers of real consequence or 
spiritual influence are only five or six in num- 
ber, and all are struggling to keep alive un- 
less subsidized. Of the quarterlies other than 
specialized publications there are no more than 
four or five, supported in most instances by 
public-spirited philanthropy. The best Amer- 
ican quarterly, which is, in my judgment, also 
the best quarterly in the world, is a hobby of, 
not a profit for, its pubhsher. It is brilliantly 
edited, its contributions are keen, original, 
sparkhng, profound, by some of the ablest 
thinkers of our time. It is issued by one of 
the three or four publishing houses of highest 
standing in this country, and yet the American 
public of a hundred million people does not 
buy enough copies of it to make it self-support- 
ing. I am inclined to say that the culture of 
a nation can be determined by the character 
and the circulation of its quarterlies, for they 
may well be considered the index to and the 
embodiment of the character, scholarship, judg- 
ment and taste of the communities which they 
endeavor to serve. Their lack of circulation in 
this country is not because their place has been 
usurped by monthly magazines, for so far as I 
know, there are only two monthlies issued in 
the United States that are at all comparable 
with the four or five quarterlies to which I have 



INTRODUCTION 

referred. One of these has become self-sup- 
porting in recent years only by catering to a 
more popular and less cultured taste than of 
old; the other is still non-supporting, although 
it was changed from a quarterly to a monthly 
with the hope of enabling it to pay its 
way. Someone may assert that quarterlies do 
not appeal to the " character and genius of 
the American people," and the assertion would 
be more truthful than complimentary ! As for 
books, it is only within a week that one of the 
best known booksellers in the country re- 
marked that the buying and reading of books 
was ceasing to be a habit or practice on the 
part of the American public, and that there 
were not more than between two hundred and 
three hundred book shops worthy to be called 
such throughout the entire United States. It 
is to be hoped our university presses, several 
of which have been established during the past 
decade, may be able to do something to encour- 
age and stimulate the production of books by 
writers whose work along cultural lines is of the 
greatest value. 

The unconventional, untamed, iconoclastic 
spirit of these early years of the twentieth cen- 
tury has even affected our verse forms. Our 
" up-to-date " poets no longer have time or in- 
clination to trouble themselves with such incon- 



INTRODUCTION 

sequential matters as meter and rhyme. The 
resulting verse is formless, but sounds more 
shapely when characterized in French as vers 
libre; its substance, nevertheless, remains as 
formless as its external guise. Cubist art is 
an excuse for want of training and lack of skill, 
which cubist poets, painters and sculptors have 
neither the time nor the desire to cultivate. 
Vers libre is cubist poetry. 

The acquisition of culture is largely a mat- 
ter of continuous personal training (although 
much aid comes of natural refinement and good 
breeding), and this training depends upon ma- 
turity, inclination, and a reasonable amount of 
leisure. Its fruition is in the fine art of living, 
which does not exist in its fulness where the 
contemplative spirit is absent. We often hear 
the uncontemplative express regret at not hav- 
ing had a college education, making that the 
excuse for personal shortcomings due to the 
absence of any real effort to remedy them. 
But culture is not to be gained in the imma- 
ture years of college life, although the founda- 
tion for it may then be laid by the acquirement 
of a genuine taste for knowledge and by study 
of the humanities. It is not, however, through 
companionship with twenty year old classmates 
in college, nor in the taking of eighteen or 
twenty courses out of several hundred in the 



INTRODUCTION 

curriculum, nor by occasional or slight contact 
with the professors or teachers of our collegiate 
years that the real spirit of culture can be 
broadened into a mode of living and an atti- 
tude toward life; that comes only after years 
of maturity, with the reflection and independ- 
ent thinking which is the product of a fuller 
and richer mental life, stimulated by associa- 
tion with, or the reading of the writings of, 
those who have themselves, through study, 
thought, travel, and personal character, won 
the privilege and right to influence for good the 
life of their time and of the future as far as 
they may. Among the greatest contributors, 
therefore, to this " good cause of culture " are 
our foremost writers of essays on art, music, 
literature, the drama, travel, history, govern- 
ment, religion, and the many other topics which 
have their part in a broad and sane understand- 
ing and appreciation of life and living. Con- 
sequently, books of essays are of fundamental 
value in their contribution to American cul- 
ture. 

During recent years no American man of 
letters has done more through his writings to 
promote a genuine spirit of culture in this 
country than the author from whose books have 
been selected the contents of this volume. 
Before speaking more precisely of his literary 



INTRODUCTION 

work, however, let me present Frederic Row- 
land Marvin, the man. The publishing of 
books is a privileged business in that into it 
the personal element enters to an unusual de- 
gree. The intimate contact between author 
and publisher has frequently opened the door 
to close and lasting friendships where the tra- 
ditional rivalry of interests between author and 
publisher plays no part, — friendships often 
savoring much of those to be read about in 
the annals of the Old World publishers as ex- 
isting between them and the great figures in 
English literature. So has come to me the 
privilege of an intimate knowledge of the ripe 
culture, sound wisdom, and high character of 
Dr. Marvin. His keen sense of humor I have 
often enjoyed upon occasion. Necessarily, 
communication has frequently been by mail, but 
by no means always in prose, for he has now 
and then resorted to delightful and whimsical 
verse, enjoyable even without a personal knowl- 
edge of or acquaintance with those concerned 
and the circumstances involved. Only two of 
these poems have been included in the present 
volume ; they are entitled " The Revolt of the 
Oyster" and "Ye Ballad of a Woeful Pub- 
lisher." To these the reader who would know 
Dr. Marvin in one of his lighter and even jovial 
moods is referred. 



INTRODUCTION 

Dr. Marvin was bom September 23, 1847, 
in Troy, New York, and consequently has 
reached the ripe age of three score years and 
ten on the eve of the publication of the pres- 
ent volume. He received the degree of M.D. 
from the College of Physicians and Surgeons 
(Columbia University) in 1870, and for a brief 
season practiced medicine in the City of New 
York. Later he was graduated from the 
Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church 
in America, at New Brunswick, New Jersey, 
and in 1879 he was ordained as a Congrega- 
tional clergyman. His three pastorates were 
at Middletown, New York, Portland, Oregon, 
and Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Our 
author since his retirement from the pulpit has 
made his home in the old historic city of Al- 
bany, the capital of our Empire State. 

Dr. Marvin is the author of twelve books, 
eight of which his present publishers carry upon 
their list. To characterize impersonally his 
work is impossible, even were it desirable. His 
books are poetical, for he has the spirit of a 
poet, and thoughtfully written, for he is a 
scholar who has given a large part of his life 
to the careful study of men and things. Ex- 
tensive foreign travel, a wide acquaintance with 
men of letters and affairs, and a profound 
study of human progress in many fields have 



INTRODUCTION 

given him a cosmopolitan interest in life which 
has enriched a receptive mind and kindled a 
responsive heart. His understanding of men 
and of the things that go to make our human 
life is that of a lover of his kind, — and as such 
a lover his perceptions are qualified by broad 
charity and a kind and genial humor. 

On Dr. Marvin the gods have bestowed the 
rare and wholly captivating gift of writing 
both authoritatively and entertainingly on an 
almost inexhaustible number of topics, and to 
his ability to make many a subject hitherto lit- 
tle known or wholly neglected live and breathe 
for his readers America owes a genuine debt, 
for he has added materially to the growth of 
public interest in art and letters by the allure- 
ment of his style and the large range of his 
culture. 

In his " The Companionship of Books " our 
author gave us his first volume of essays on lit- 
erary and allied themes, a book of wide and 
varied interests, revealing at once the intellec- 
tual breadth and the keen perceptions of its au- 
thor. It is by the study and mental assimila- 
tion of volumes of this kind, tending to broaden 
intellectual outlook and social sympathies, that 
the roots of genuine culture are nourished, the 
fruit of which is to be had for the plucking. 
No essayist can do more than place at the com- 



INTRODUCTION 

mand of his readers the gathered product of 
study, travel, and reflection. 

Later came " Flowers of Song from Many 
Lands," a fine group of translations of " short 
poems and detached verses gathered from va- 
rious languages," incidentally revealing the 
author's interest in other literatures than his 
own, — and a command of his own that enabled 
him by exact word and apt phrase to repro- 
duce in English the meaning and shade of 
thought in the widely scattered originals. This 
book was published in 1902, and is now out of 
print, its contents having been included in 
" Poems and Translations," which also incor- 
porates " A Book of Quatrains," first published 
in 1909 and now also out of print. 

Most of the original poems in the present edi- 
tion of " Poems and Translations " first ap- 
peared in 1907, but have since been revised 
and rearranged. The catholicity of the book 
and of its author is indicated both by the sub- 
jects represented and by the authors given us 
in the various renditions. From the philos- 
ophy in both Christian and ancient civilizations 
to the prayer of an Indian raider for scalps, 
the sacrificial hymn of the South Sea Island 
cannibals, and a gay little folk tale of the West 
Indies we have striking transitions that require 
unusual limberness of poetic fibre. His orig- 



INTRODUCTION 

inal poems are in no way inferior to many of 
the translations, which they parallel in charm 
and beauty. They are full of romance, philos- 
ophy, and humor, with frequent touches of 
tenderness and sympathy that warm the heart 
and quicken the pulse. The imaginative qual- 
ity, a subtle sensitiveness to rhyme and rhythm, 
philosophic insight and interpretation, are 
marked characteristics that lend distinction to 
our author's verse. This volume, and as well 
" Flowers of Song from Many Lands " in its 
original form, and " The Last Words of Dis- 
tinguished Men and Women," are not infre- 
quently found catalogued, in special bindings, 
extra-illustrated and autographed, in collec- 
tions of costly and unusual books. 

" Christ Among the Cattle," a little brochure 
appearing shortly after " The Companionship 
of Books " and welcomed by anti-vivisection- 
ists, has passed through numerous editions and 
has been translated into three European lan- 
guages. It is a classic of its kind, to be asso- 
ciated in its mission with " Black Beauty " and 
" Rab and His Friends." It is effective be- 
cause written with the authority of personal 
knowledge trained to accurate observation 
through the author's early medical education 
and practice. 

" The Excursions of a Book-Lover," " Love 



INTRODUCTION 

and Letters," and " Fireside Papers " are 
books of rare interest and curious investiga- 
tion. American letters would be much the 
poorer unenriched by these three contributions. 
A scholarship unique in this age of feverish 
specialization underlies the essays that compose 
these books. It is that of the historian, poet, 
philosopher, and humanitarian, gathered in the 
three books named and given us by a single 
writer who has brushed aside the veil from the 
lives of other men and other times, and with the 
wisdom of a life's knowledge of men and books 
has opened a new and wider outlook for the 
experiences of the present and the future. 

In one of these essays the author remarks 
that a writer is generally, though often uncon- 
sciously, his own hero. Certain it is, as has 
been intimated, that Dr. Marvin's o^vn person- 
ality is reflected in his printed words. Of a 
literary flavor, therefore, all of these essays 
must be, but they are neither ponderous nor 
pedantic. There is always the sympathy of 
" spiritual blood ties," the understanding fos- 
tered by common " family traits " among schol- 
ars and men of letters ; and in such a spirit the 
dry seeds of fact are watered with the gentle 
dews of human interest till they become blos- 
soms brilliant in form, fragrant with kindliness, 
and rich in fruitage. 



INTRODUCTION 

An essay in one of these volumes deals with 
the philosopher. The philosophic temper, as 
portrayed, demands much, but its attainment 
is worth the achieving. The comforting com- 
pound requires a generous quantity of that 
blessed aromatic, hope, a poetic conception of 
beauty, a dash of the spice of humor, an accept- 
ance of the really inevitable — all well com- 
pounded with love and common sense; and al- 
though it is not written in the text, there is evi- 
dence between the lines that this philosopher of 
ours is also, if unconsciously, an idealist. 

The pleasant acquaintance which has been 
formed between Dr. Marvin and his publishers, 
one of whom is the compiler and editor of this 
book, has led to a familiar and at times 
somewhat witty and whimsical correspondence, 
mostly in verse. To know Dr. Marvin as an 
author one must know, in part at least, this 
side of his nature and of his genius. The two 
poems, "Ye Ballad of a Woeful Publisher" 
and "The Revolt of the Oyster," to which 
should be added a poem printed in the collected 
" Poems and Translations " of our author pub- 
lished in 1914, and called " The Church of the 
Holy Furbelows," disclose this peculiarity. The 
two poems named were not written for publica- 
tion, and are here introduced because without 
them and a few other compositions of the same 



INTRODUCTION 

kind the witty side of our author's genius must 
remain in a measure undisclosed; and also be- 
cause the compiler believes them to be worthy 
of a place in this collection. One naturally 
feels some hesitancy about introducing lines so 
intensely personal, but how else are Dr. Mar- 
vin's readers to become acquainted with a side 
of his genius unsuspected by a large number 
of those who find pleasure in his work? That 
two of the poems named address the com- 
piler of this book and even mention his name 
render their insertion, as has been said, a mat- 
ter of delicacy ; but one may not change in any 
wise the work of another without permission, 
which in this case it was impossible to secure. 
The two compositions referred to are local in 
character and color and would without some ex- 
planatory notes be understood with difficulty by 
those who are unfamiliar with Boston and its 
neighborhood. Brief notes have been added in 
their proper places. Perhaps not all of Dr. 
Marvin's readers will find marked pleasure in 
the poems named, but surely those who enjoy 
Cowper's " John Gilpin " cannot but derive 
some satisfaction from the three poems to which 
attention has been called. 

Dr. Marvin's books have been written, all 
of them, from a pure love of literature. They 
are a scholar's contribution to American let- 



INTRODUCTION 

ters and American culture, with the unconcealed 
hope that wisdom sipped from the wine- jar may 
give pleasure to coming generations that, look- 
ing back to our own, may deem it not, after 
all, quite so empty of culture as many of our 
contemporaries think, and concerning which an 
increasing number of the enlightened men and 
women of to-day send forth utterances of de- 
spair. Surely the spirit in which the author of 
this noble group of twelve volumes writes can 
not be better expressed than in the following 
lines by Kenyon Cox: 

" Work thou for pleasure ; paint or sing or carve 
The thing thou lovest, tho* the body starve. 

" Who works for glory misses oft the goal ; 
Who works for money coins his very soul. 

" Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be 
That these things shall be added unto thee." 

Livingston Stebbins 



CONTENTS 

I 
PROSE 

PAGE 

I GOD, RELIGION, AND IMMORTALITY 1 

II PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION ... 21 

III ORACLES AND COUNSELS .... 41 

IV CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, AND HEROISM 57 
V TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 73 

VI NATURE 83 

VII KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 93 

VIII WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME ... 99 

IX MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY .... 117 

X LITERATURE AND LITERARY FAME 129 

XI OLD AGE AND DEATH 143 

XII MISCELLANY 163 

II 

POEMS 

I MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ITl 

Ether 173 

Only a Word 173 

True Gesterosity 174 

"Thou Knowest" 174 

Shelley 174 

The Rule of Life 175 



PAGE 

Marcus ArmELius and Epictetus . . .175 

Somewhere 176 

The Poet to His Lady 177 

Kindness 177 

Sweet Company 178 

A Wayside Flower 178 

"Sigh Not a Vanished Past" . . . .179 

Age 180 

Brahma's Cup 181 

From "Berkley Churchyard" .... 182 

Here and Now 184 

Driftwood 184 

How to Remain Young 184 

Hope 185 

Over-Faith 185 

"How Do Cherries Taste?" 186 

The Open Door 186 

Persis 187 

Persis 188 

To Persis Reading a Sad Book . . . .188 

Persis 189 

Sixty 189 

Venus Lamia 190 

"O Love, Surpassing Sweet and Fair" . . 190 

Yes 191 

Castles in Spain 191 

Passion 192 

"If I Love You" 192 

To a Rose 192 

In Every Field 193 

My Hour 193 

The Candle of the Lord 193 

Trust 194 

The Downward Gaze 195 

The Daisy 195 

Quiet Power 196 



Madoiti^a 197 

Friend of Lonely Souls 197 

"O Little Grain of Dust" 198 

Prayer for Strength 199 

Beauty for Ashes 200 

Infinite Presence 200 

United Life 201 

Christmas 202 

Experience 202 

At the Tomb of Senancoue .... 203 

Comradeship 205 

Madison Cawein 206 

The Lion of Lucerne 208 

Reality 209 

The Land of Golden Stars 209 

Two Little Angels 210 

America 211 

Books 212 

Poetry 212 

Spinoza 212 

On the Desert 213 

A Rose for the Living 215 

Vanity 215 

Transcendentalism 216 

Materialism 216 

Truth 216 

The Reactionary 216 

The Kaiser's Soliloquy 217 

Dante at Corvo 218 

II WIT AND HUMOR 221 

Church of the Holy Furbelows . . . 223 

The Test of Love 228 

Ye Ballad of a Woeful Publisher . . 229 

The Revolt of the Oyster 233 

A New England Housewife 239 

Epitaph 239 



PAGE 

III TRANSLATIONS 241 

To THE HUSBAKDMEK 243 

The Whistling Daughter 243 

A Lover's Wish 244 

Humanity 2i5 

A Happy Lot *246 

Lais Dedicates Her Mirror to Venus . . 247 

Faith 248 

Song of the Wandering Knight . . . 248 

The Unity of Faith 249 

The' Words of the Wise Are Few . . . 249 

The Fool's Beard 249 

The Fool's Flight 250 

The Palm 250 

Good Night 250 

The House of God 251 

Scant Hospitality 251 

The Fairest Thing 252 

III 

DEDICATIONS 
DEDICATIONS 257 



PROSE 



There is one thing that prose cannot do: it can- 
not sing. 

— Arthur Symons. 



GOD, RELIGION, AND IMMORTALITY 

Say your prayers standing; but if you are not 
able, do it sitting; and if not sitting, in bed. 

— Mohammed. 

It is our religion to love God; it is our duty to 
obey Him; and it is our hope to enjoy His pres- 
ence forever. 

CiREDERF NiVRAM. 



GOD, RELIGION, AND IMMORTALITY 



More and more we are coming to think of 
God as inseparably associated with nature, as 
working with it and through it. We would not 
undervalue the Divine revelation in man — 
" the Word was made flesh " — but modern 
science has disclosed Him in nature with new 
power and beauty. This is a noble view of 
His presence and activity. In the blush of 
the morning and in the evening breeze He is 
present. In Him as in a mirror is reflected 
the vast universe. You may call this Pantheism 
if you will, but it remains a noble thought of 
the Creator. The poet apparels it in some- 
thing of its own beauty in " Tintern Abbey " : 

" I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused. 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit which impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
And rolls through all things." 
1 



2 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

II 

Narrow and puerile ideas of the Divine 
Presence destroy the power of that Presence. 
The God who concerns Himself with religious 
trifles and trinkets will be found to concern 
Himself with nothing more important. Here 
lies the danger of every kind of Ritualism. 
The toy and the child go together, alike in 
cradle and pew. Vestments, processions, in- 
cense, altar-cloth, mitre, the pastoral staff, and 
candles — what are these but the sacred tops, 
balls, and kites of children who long ago should 
have developed into full-grown men and women ? 

Ill 

" God is on our side ! " is the vainglorious cry 
of thousands. How few inquire, with humble 
mind and honest heart, " Am I on God's side? " 

IV 
Always the lion-heart is a heart of faith. 



Character is essentially the power of re- 
sisting temptation. 

VI 

A MAN this morning told me that his lack of 
education was mainly due to the meanness of 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 3 

his surroundings. But it was in the dirty 
Soho streets that Blake saw the earliest of his 
divine visions. A man may build him a house 
for his soul to dwell in where the sons of mud 
see nothing better than their own rudeness and 
vileness. And in that house, lighted by the 
glory of heaven, he may abide in wonder and 
gladness all the days of his life on earth. Em- 
erson heard the song celestial, and gazed upon 
scenes of marvelous splendor in even the " mud 
and scum of things." A man may not be the 
creator of circumstances, but neither is he 
wholly their creature. 

VII 

Mohammed was a child of solitude and 
silence. His visions came to him when he was 
far out on the desert. It was there, surrounded 
by natural desolation, that he discovered the 
spiritual desolation of his time and country. 
On wild and lonely Mount Hara, near Mecca, 
he received his first revelation, and from that 
deserted and remote elevation he went forth 
proclaiming to an idolatrous world the One 
God of Islamism. 

Apuleius tells us, in his " Golden Ass," that 
he was able to pray to the Goddess Isis because 
of the silence of the night. The great prayers 
of aU ages and of all religions have demanded 



4 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

tranquillity of spirit ; they were possible only in 
the hush of a calm and undisturbed temper to 
which the stillness of surrounding nature in 
many cases contributed much. Prayer is the 
very heart of religion. There can be no re- 
ligion without this inner communion of the soul 
with God. What is called " natural religion " 
is, in so far as it is prayerless, no religion at 
all. Religion without prayer is only philoso- 
phy, and has nothing whatever to do with the 
deep places of spiritual experience. Can any- 
one think of such prayers as those of Marcus 
Aurelius, Epictetus, Saint Bernard, Loyola, 
Fox, Wesley, and George Miiller in connection 
with natural religion? Great achievements are 
born of a deep serenity of the soul. 



VIII 

There has been recently discovered, so it 
is reported, the secret of the " eternal flames " 
that burned from year to year without any visi- 
ble renewing of fuel upon the altar of Zoroaster 
on the " Sacred Isle " in the Caspian Sea, where 
the founder of the fire-cult preached his re- 
ligious doctrines. The altar was situated di- 
rectly over a deposit of natural gas. Neither 
the prophet nor his followers had any knowledge 
of the gas, which had probably been lighted by 
accident, and which, when once lighted, con- 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 5 

tinued to burn year after year. The mysteri- 
ous flame, sustained with apparently no re- 
newal of material for combustion, was easily 
mistaken for a celestial fire kindled and sup- 
ported in attestation of the doctrine and faith 
taught and served at the altar. A fire that 
burned for only a brief time authenticated the 
mission of Elijah and occasioned the overthrow 
of the priests of Baal. How much more con- 
vincing to men living under a primitive civiliza- 
tion must have appeared the " eternal flames " 
that required, so far as could be discovered, 
neither care nor fuel. Were those men and 
women who centuries ago adored that mystical 
fire fools or impostors? They were neither. 
They made the best use of the limited knowledge 
within their reach. More could not have been 
required of them. I cannot believe that the 
Infinite Mercy held them accountable for a light 
that never illuminated their darkened under- 
standing, and for opportunities they never en- 
joyed. 

IX 

No one ever recovered a lost faith by adver- 
tising for it. 

X 

The silent and unconscious influence of a 
man of real force in any neighborhood is greater 
than is commonly supposed. The subtle power 



6 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

of personal presence extends in every direction, 
and refuses to die with the man who set it in 
motion. Strong men impress others not alone 
by their opinions and by what they say and do, 
but by even their trivial mannerisms that seem 
so unimportant. You cannot imprison a man's 
influence. You may load the man with chains, 
but that marvelous something that proceeds 
from him, and that is in a way a part of him, 
walks free. 

XI 

Many a whispered word of comfort has 
awakened a never-ending echo of infinite tender- 
ness. 

XII 

There is always at the heart of every great 
happiness a sense of melancholy without which 
the happiness would be nothing more than a 
trivial gayety. 

XIII 

The smallest human heart may hold a vast 
solitude. 

XIV 

There is for every one of us an invisible and 
intangible life that is not less real because re- 
moved from the world of sense. We live in the 
lives of others ; in what others are and wish to 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 7 

be; in the subtle influences which they diffuse, 
and by which we are in a measure guided and 
controlled. Organic ties bind us together. 
Common hopes and interests make us to be a 
community. Even the little child of but a few 
months, perhaps of but a few days only, cannot 
die without having made some contribution to 
this common life. Through an impression 
made upon the mother the child places its little 
hand, it may be, upon the entire world and upon 
long ages. Sometimes the dead accomplish 
more than the living. Here we touch what may 
be called a neighborliness of the soul. I think 
George Eliot had in mind this thought when she 
wrote her noble lines about " the choir invisi- 
ble" with which every serious reader is fa- 
miliar. 

XV 

The man who contemplates his own littleness 
without humility, and his own imperfections 
without disgust, neither loves holiness nor fears 
sin. 

XVI 

The Lord demands not " holy orders," but 
holy men. 

XVII 

There could be no religion but of mud-gods 
and dirt-worshippers, without the overhanging 



8 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

dream-world of which the poet is prophet and 
interpreter. We shall never know how great 
is the world's indebtedness to the masters of 
song who prevent men from living by bread 
alone. " Where there is no vision," said the 
sacred writer, " the people perish." The 
breath of spiritual life is preserved within us 
by the revelations of those sons of light. 



XVIII 

With Plotinus, I thank God my soul is not 
imprisoned within an immortal body, for in 
that case I should know a new mortality more 
to be feared than the one of which I now have 
knowledge. From every agony possible to man 
death furnishes a sure escape. A deathless 
body would mean living death. And yet men 
would close and fasten as with bolts of steel 
the one door without which hope were impos- 
sible. They would inscribe over the cradle of 
every infant the words that Dante saw over 
the Place of Doom, " All hope abandon, ye 
who enter here." I could not wish to live were 
it not permitted me to die. 



XIX 

No power on earth or in hell can make a lie 
immortal. 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 9 
XX 

Oethodoxy is the heterodoxy of yesterday. 

XXI 

Materialism as a system is easily demolished, 
because it is without foundation ; but material- 
ism as a tendency of the worldly mind is impreg- 
nable save to Divine Grace, because it has a real 
foundation in the nature of the man who enter- 
tains it. 

XXII 

It is a man's majestic " Yes 1 " to the voice 
of Duty that makes him the man he is. 

XXIII 

Goethe was for a moment staggered by the 
thought of the afterwards of death. " To 
me," said he, " the thought of a life without 
end, even though it were a happy one, appears 
more dreadful than the most acute physical 
anguish." The great poet forgot the capacity 
of the human mind for infinite development, 
and that not even eternity can exhaust its 
power. A noted mathematician has calculated 
that in solving the possible problems of plain 
circles alone, one could spend seven hundred 
million years. Is it, then, difficult to under- 
stand how an eternity might be employed in 



10 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

the acquisition of knowledge? When Socrates 
said to the weeping friends who gathered 
around him after he had received the fatal cup, 
" You may bury me if you can catch me," he 
anticipated for his immortal part another life 
worthy of his philosophical attainments. It 
was his comfort in the hour of death to know 
that he should spend eternity in the society of 
great and gifted men like Hesiod and Homer. 
Such society seemed to him well calculated to 
make immortality a priceless boon. 

XXIV 

Benvej^uto Cellini, after a terrible dream 
which he had in the castle of St. Angelo, saw 
a light over his head wherever he went, and 
though the flame burned with greater brightness 
when the grass was wet with dew, it never en- 
tirely disappeared. The human soul, like the 
great sculptor, often beholds, after some dread- 
ful calamity, a luminous presence and sees with 
clearer vision. Troubles, like thunder-storms, 
purify the atmosphere, and when the sun shines 
out upon the moist sod, glistening with crystal 
beauty, the soul discovers new grace and larger 
truth on every side. In a shower of tears God 
often sets the rainbow of His promise. 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 11 
XXV 

To lips unsanctified by the divine grace of 
self-renunciation there are few cups more bitter 
than that of neglect. It bites into even the 
serene heart of Wisdom to see glittering and 
tinkling Folly crowned in her place. And 
yet when the soul has learned to put self aside 
and to say, " Not my will, but Thine be done ! " 
Gethsemane is peopled with angels, and the 
bitter cup is changed into a blessed sacrament 
of peace. 

XXVI 

Mud and slime may be good for the oyster, 
but without sunshine and blue sky there can 
be no high thinking, noble aspiration, and in- 
spiring romance. Better than the swamp-gas 
of materialism is the too thin air of mysticism. 
Dionysius the Areopagite has had a large fam- 
ily of dreamers, but there have been among 
them many sons and daughters of power and 
enchantment. 

XXVII 

Woe to religion when it ceases to be a matter 
of faith, and becomes one of mere opinion. 

XXVIII 

When angry thoughts and impatient words 
begin to color your argument, remember that 



12 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

no two things are more widely sundered than 
search for truth and strife for victory. 

XXIX 

There is an atheism of the head, which is 
not infrequently associated with noble think- 
ing and useful living; there is an atheism of the 
heart, which springs from and results in moral 
corruption; and there is an antheism of the 
digestive organs, which, having said to the belly, 
" Thou art my god," finds its holiest aspira- 
tions more than realized in a luxuriously selfish 
life. 

XXX 

Teuth must be sought for her own sake. 
From all who would find her for private ends 

— to establish their own preconceived opinions 
or those of their church or party — she hides 
herself in impenetrable darkness. 

XXXI 

It is a sweet and pleasant thought that when 
all these days of pain and sorrow and work are 
ended — these days of contending and unrest 

— there will come the folding of hands. It is 
sweet, when sorrow and weariness are our only 
companions, to remember that the hour is not 
far away when the Father will fold the tired 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 13 

hands of His child in His, will seal the aching 
eyes with sleep, and breathe under their trem- 
bling lids the sweet dream of heaven. Weary 
not, nor faint ; the Father sees you, and, though 
you know it not, His hand leads you. A little 
pain and a little labor He metes you for your 
good; be patient, and when the night comes 
He will give you rest. 

XXXII 

Strange it is that men who are so anxious to 
find the dead Christ in His tomb, and the his- 
torical Christ in Palestine, care so little for 
the spiritual Christ in their own hearts. 

XXXIII 

After all it is possible to say against creeds 
has been said, it still remains true that the 
man is weak indeed and greatly to be pitied 
who cannot say, " I believe." 

XXXIV 

Whoever believes there is a difference be- 
tween a lie and the truth has a creed. 

XXXV 

With the reason one may discover duty; 
with the will he may force himself into external 



14 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAE 

obedience to its requirements ; but only with 
the heart can he so love " I ought " as to change 
it into " I desire." 

XXXVI 

You cannot drink water from an empty cup, 
neither can you drink the water of life from an 
empty soul. 

XXXVII 

The Sacred Writings describe God as a 
searcher of hearts, but nowhere do they repre- 
sent Him as a searcher of church records. 

XXXVIII 

More strength comes from believing one 
thing than from doubting a thousand. 

XXXIX 

It does not greatly trouble me that I am 
called to believe some things I cannot under- 
stand, but it would seriously trouble me were 
it otherwise. Were there no thoughts in the 
infinite mind of the Creator too large for my 
feeble and fallible understanding, it would fol- 
low by a fatally irresistible logic that God 
is no wiser than his creatures, and, therefore, 
no better able to guide them than they are to 
guide themselves. A God comprehended is a 
God dethroned. 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 15 

XL 

In the cathedral-building centuries of long 
ago the church included in its fellowship nearly 
all there was of civilized society. It touched 
our human race at every conceivable point. 
No work could be commenced without its sanc- 
tion. It well-nigh monopolized architecture 
and the fine arts. The greatest pictures by the 
greatest artists were made under the inspira- 
tion of religion, and were altar-pieces for sacred 
edifices. Raphael and Michael Angelo crowned 
with immortal genius the holy faith and spirit- 
ual aspiration of an ecclesiastical system that 
had its living root in every human heart. Lit- 
erature belonged to the church. Learning was 
its possession, as was also civil government. 
The church was everything. Soldiers wore the 
cross emblazoned upon their breasts, and every 
nook and corner had its shrine. But now 
things are changed. The priest no longer com- 
mands the conscience and shapes the conduct of 
men. The tides of religious authority are at 
their ebb, and the naked shingles of belief are 
stirred no more by shifting waves. 



XLI 

It should always be remembered that no 
philosophy is sound that leaves God out of con- 
sideration, or that fails of perceiving his good- 



16 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

ness and of confiding in his character. Day 
and night we are in the encircling embrace of 
infinite Love. That Love called us into being, 
and upon its bosom we are cradled. " Beneath 
us are the everlasting arms." Thus do the 
sacred writings teach us to view the Creator, 
and all the later disclosures of natural science 
point in the same direction. 

Kant holds that it is the office of philosophy 
to answer three questions: 1. What can I 
know.? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What 
may I hope for? It seems to us that true 
philosophy goes further, and makes to us dis- 
closure of our present possessions. It opens 
the eye to the vision of an infinite, eternal, and 
unchangeable Friend, and renders forever true 
the words of the poet: 

** Out of the shadows of night 
The world rolls into light; 
It is daylight everywhere." 

XLII 

The supreme office of the church is spiritual. 
Books, music and art are now within the reach 
of all. We have the news of the entire world 
in our morning paper. Travel is no longer 
difficult, and its expense is not now prohibitive. 
The problems of science are discussed at the 
club and in the street. We are surfeited with 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 17 

the haste and clatter of unromantic, selfish, 
grinding modern life. " One man is as good 
las another ; " " All men are born free and 
equal ; " " We demand our rights ; " "A dollar 
saved is a dollar earned ; " " Time is money ; " 
" Get out of the way ; " " Mind your own busi- 
ness " — these graceless mottoes are a fair epit- 
ome of the rude, vulgar, and unspiritual 
thought and feeling of thousands. The dream 
is gone. The aspiration is evaporated. The 
vision is no more. To the church men turn 
for help and uplifting. In her we must find 
our spiritual ideal. She must teach us that 
life is more than meat and drink. A pro- 
foundly spiritual pulpit is the one great need 
of the age. Eloquence is good if we do not 
have too much of it; a trained choir is to be 
desired if we can have it without the opera ; an 
elaborate ritual may serve noble ends if only 
it be so transparent that through it we dis- 
cern the living Christ ; but over and above all 
is the one great cry of the human heart in every 
land and age, " We would see Jesus ! " A 
spiritual, God-illuminated, uplifting, inspiring 
pulpit is the demand of the heart and the need 
of the world. " Jesus Christ, and Him cruci- 
fied ! " — without that no pulpit Is worth the 
timber that goes into its construction. 



18 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XLIII 

Certain materialistic philosophers are en- 
quiring : " Is this the best of possible worlds ? " 
Perhaps not! The gourmand who fails of ob- 
taining all the terrapin and champagne he de- 
sires has a ground of complaint. He who 
wants a sovereign and has only a shilling is not 
without a grievance. But the fact that God 
made this world to His own mind satisfies me, 
and I can see that His glory is better than 
the beastly gratification of the hon vivant, 

XLIV 

The effort to retain an obsolete church, an 
effete government, or an antiquated supersti- 
tion has always proved a failure, and is like 
a child's endeavor to retain a melting icicle by 
squeezing it in its little fist — the firmer the 
grasp the more speedy the departure. While 
a man repeats a dead creed with his lips, that 
very creed slips out of his heart and is gone. 
Liturgy is often only another way of spelling 
lethargy, and the creed from being a statement 
of belief too easily becomes a substitute for 
faith. 

XLV 

Do thy duty, and be at peace with God and 
thine own conscience. There can be no true 
peace for thee apart from the honest and daily 



GOD, RELIGION, IMMORTALITY 19 

discharge of those obligations, great and small, 
which, come into thy life from the Creator, and 
which, rightly viewed, are angels of divine dis- 
cipline. Thou hast too much to say about thy 
rights, and thinkest too little about thy duties. 
Thou hast but one inalienable right, and that 
is the sublime one of doing thy duty at all times, 
under all circumstances, and in all places. 

XLVI 

Wonderful is the power of great sorrow to 
sanctify the heart and purify the life. Under 
its influence the most deep-seated prejudices 
are dispelled, and the bitter and contentious 
heart is completely subdued. No one is fitted 
for companionship, much less for the holy 
ofiice of friendship, who has not quaffed at 
least one wholesome draught from the cup of 
affliction. Therefore, O Lord, while my weak 
human heart dare not pray for even those most 
salutary sorrows which so strengthen character 
and -clarify spiritual vision, it does most earn- 
estly entreat that sorrows which have already 
crossed its path may never be forgotten, but 
remain the priceless treasure of a sanctified 
memory, and of a pure, believing, and loving 
heart. 



II 

PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 

Philosophy is a loving use of wisdom. 

— Dante. 

Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? 

— Shakespeare. 

The people's prayer — the glad diviner's theme, 
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream. 

— Dryden. 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 



The philosophic temper kindles hope. To 
every man it says, " Fortune smiles upon thou- 
sands; your turn may come next." It lights 
up the ideal world. It whispers, " Wait." It 
suggests to the soul that what it most fears 
may not be so bad after all, and that many 
things coveted are not so good as they appear. 
It brings to mind the advice, " Never cross a 
bridge before you come to it " — that is to say, 
do not anticipate troubles. It takes short 
views of life. The future we dread may never 
come to us. Many things we fear we should 
not fear did we but know them better. 



II 

To a thoughtful mind the silence of Nature 
is even more impressive than are the convulsions 
and tornadoes that startle and affright. The 
untrained imagination is filled with surprise and 
wonder when fierce winds lash the ocean into 
wild and ungoverned fury; but to poet and 
artist the serene glory of sunrise and the gentle 
23 



24 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

approach of evening twilight present an attrac- 
tion quite as pleasing as are the more excep- 
tional displays of natural force. In the great 
world of human life of which we are a part the 
same thing is true. To a finely attuned tem- 
per and a cultivated mind there is an impres- 
siveness in the silence of the right man at the 
right time that no display of passion can equal. 
The silence of our Saviour not only surprised 
Peter, but impresses and will always impress 
men by the fine eloquence of its rebuke. 
" Study to be quiet," wrote an apostle. Few 
of us, with all our study, have yet acquired 
much of that Divine skill. 



Ill 

As ships cross lines of latitude and longitude 
without experiencing any change in tempera- 
ture, so the ship of human life sails over the 
years and marks not the passage. And how 
variable and unreliable is human perception in 
this matter. Have as many clocks and watches 
as you please, still " we live in feelings, not in 
figures on a dial, and count time by heart- 
throbs." We believe our own pulses against 
all the chronometers in the world. We may 
whisper to ourselves, " There are but sixty 
minutes in the hour," nevertheless happy hours 
fly and sad ones creep. 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 25 

IV 

The real man is, after all, not the man with 
whom we have personal acquaintance. Not tiU 
Time has sifted out the chaff can we garner the 
pure grain. Only when the visible man has be- 
come a phantom are we able to discern the sub- 
stantial and enduring man whose home is his- 
tory, and whose work is the common possession 
of an entire race. 

V 

As the housemaid believes that the only dif- 
ference between her mistress and herself is that 
of money or of fine clothes, so the village lubber 
holds that the only difference between the wisest 
and ablest man that ever walked this earth 
and himself is that of opportunity. He will 
tell you that the same opportunity must in 
either case, or in both cases, produce exactly 
the same result ; all of which is as untrue as 
would be the statement that, given the same 
soil, moisture, light, and temperature, all seeds 
must come to the same flower. 

VI 

To be open to argument and to be open to 
conviction are two different things. 

VII 

You can never rejoice in what you do not 
believe. 



26 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
VIII 

True peace and deep conviction are insep- 
arable. 

IX 

Centres of power are silent. 

X 

No defeat is final that does not involve the 
will. 

XI 

It is a dangerous thing to stir emotion with- 
out creating conviction, for such emotion is 
wholly irresponsible. It is an advancing flame 
that respects neither the good nor the bad, but 
sweeps before it whatever would obstruct its 
progress. The man who is at the mercy of his 
emotions is at the mercy of a mob. A crowd 
of tatterdemalion feelings, scatterbrained sans- 
culotterie of the mind, come, hot with silly 
indignation, trampling over what should have 
been cultivated ground, to right some fancied 
wrong, or it may be to avenge some real wrong 
by the commission of a greater. So were the 
noisy creatures of the French Revolution bent 
upon changing this old world, or so much of it 
as was In France, Into a veritable garden of 
Eden — for whom ? the f anf aron of the 
lamp-post, drunk, blear-eyed, and full of mur- 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 27 

der. Man is never safe when guided by his 
emotions. Even our good emotions are bad 
guides. 

XII 

The politician bears the same relation to 
the patriot that the scarecrow bears to a living 
man. Both are grotesque imitations and noth- 
ing more. 

XIII 

The good man sees around him a world of 
divine beauty ; he sees as well a world of oppor- 
tunity, and he feels within him a desire to im- 
prove still more the world as it presents itself 
to his mind. The evil man beholds a world full 
of base and worthless things that please his 
evil mind, and he proceeds at once to make it 
still worse. The loneliness of the desert is a 
poetical conception formed in the human mind. 
The traveler, standing on the edge of the Lib- 
yan waste, is overcome by the sense of solitude ; 
but the Arab pitches his tent far out in the 
rainless region, and lies down at night beneath 
the silent stars with no thought of discomfort. 
The two men inhabit different worlds and each 
has created for himself the world in which he 
lives. 

Algot Lange, who was lost in the intermina- 
ble forests that surround the headwaters of the 
Amazon, told me how, having seen his little 



28 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

party die, one after another, from fever and 
snake-bite, until he was left alone in the vast 
jungle, he came face to face with a horror that 
neither language nor art can depict. It was 
the opening of his eyes to the terror of his 
situation. He was not overcome by the fear of 
death, for neither he nor his men were afraid 
of death at any time during the journey. It 
was not privation, for they were inured to that. 
It was an absolutely unique experience that 
came with a vision of the loneliness of his situa- 
tion. A sudden internal experience changed 
for him in a few moments the entire appearance 
of so much of the world as at that time con- 
cerned him. But the South American Indians 
inhabiting that part of the continent saw noth- 
ing in the landscape to terrify or distress them. 
Geographically they were not far away, but 
though only a dozen miles, it may be, separated 
them from Lange, they and the explorer were, 
nevertheless, dwelling in entirely different 
worlds. 

XIV 

Life must always be lonely to one who thinks. 
Thinking is a process of separation. It sun- 
ders man from man, and gives to the mind a 
separate life and an aim different from that 
which controls the surrounding world. It is 
surprising how large a part of our common ex- 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 29 

istence is carried on with little thought, and 
how much of that little thought is automatic, 
subconscious, and hap-hazard. I do not know 
how much of the depression that enters so 
surely into the mind of the man who thinks 
apart from the conventional beliefs and opin- 
ions of his fellows, is due to the isolation that 
must in the very nature of the case follow; but 
certain it is that men who blaze new trails must 
learn to draw their strength from within and 
not from without. Social habits and common- 
place opinions provide an easier road for the 
ordinary traveler, and there can be no good 
reason why he should not remain in that road 
to the end of his days, in association with agree- 
able companions. But there will always re- 
main those who find other roads more to their 
liking; those who are willing to forego fellow- 
ship and joint interests of every kind if only 
they may come upon unfrequented ways and 
break into undiscovered worlds. To such trav- 
elers the commonplace route, though safer and 
less difficult, is dull and unattractive. The 
highway is well graded and leads straight 
ahead, with few turns to right or left; but one 
must take chances in strange paths and in dis- 
tricts where there are no paths at all. In 
lonely roads there are lonely experiences, and 
such experiences are never far removed from 
the sadness that surrounds us all, whether we 



so THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

know it or not. The more isolated the way, the 
more intrusive and persistent the sadness. A 
mournful spirit breathes through all human ex- 
periences, of whatever kind. One does not 
have to turn* to the pages of Schopenhauer if 
he would learn how vast is the loneliness of our 
human life. One has but to think, and at once 
the process of disillusionment commences. 

XV 

It is wonderful, the large and rich culture 
that comes to even the most sterUe personality 
when every opportunity is improved and every 
power systematically developed. Although the 
area of Egypt capable of cultivation is about 
sixteen thousand square miles — only half the 
area of Ireland — yet Egypt was in the time of 
the Pharaohs one of the granaries of the world. 
Ordinary qualities of mind and heart may be 
cultivated until the desert blossoms as the rose. 

XVI 

Inequality is the rule of life, and the sooner 
we make up our minds to take things as they 
come, turning them to the best account for our- 
selves and others, the larger will be our field of 
usefulness and the greater will be our reward. 
We should all of us cultivate a philosophic 
temper that refuses to brood over troubles, 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 31 

break its heart over trifles, and contend against 
the inevitable. We must adapt ourselves to 
circumstances, and remember that the wise man 
" stoops to conquer." The forces of nature 
become our willing servants only when we learn 
to obey them. The key to every situation is 
found in surrender. The man who most vigor- 
ously asserts his personal independence is most 
likely the very man who knows the least of true 
liberty. Any fool may fire a gun and wave a 
flag, but he is the true patriot who obeys the 
law, minds his own business, practices virtue, 
and subordinates his personal interests to the 
public good. 

XVII 

I QUESTION the propriety of spending much 
time in early life over introspective studies. 
We need a firm grasp upon surrounding reali- 
ties before we put to ourselves the riddle of the 
Sphinx, which we shall find no matter of wit 
and laughter. The fable is at fault that tells 
us the Sphinx, when she found her perplexing 
question answered, leaped to her death. She 
continues to " brood on the world," every mo- 
ment demanding " the fate of the man-child 
and the meaning of man." They who would 
solve this riddle of their own humanity must 
first know much of the surrounding universe. 

It was by no shrewd guess that CEdipus won 



32 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

the crown from all the fools in Thebes. Behind 
the answer " Man " was a man's clear percep- 
tion of himself as he stood out in bold relief 
against an objective background. To start 
questions one cannot answer is to unsettle the 
mind, destroy the foundations of conviction and 
establish a habit of insincerity. Too much in- 
trospection has made many a sceptic and para- 
lyzed many a noble will. It is the old story of 
the perplexed centipede: 

" The centipede was happy quite, 

Until the toad for fun 
Said, * Pray, which leg comes after which ? * 
This worked her mind to such a pitch 
She lay distracted in a ditch. 

Considering how to run." 

XVIII 

Give me no narrow-minded, selfish son of 
New England to whom a dollar-bill is larger 
than a blanket; no uncut diamond of the far 
west with a rude familiarity that repels at 
every turn, and a boastful temper one does not 
like to encounter; nor yet would I cast my lot 
with the southern " gentleman " whose horizon 
is even more restricted than his pocket-book; 
but make me, I pray you, well acquainted with 
the generous and courteous, even if at times 
commonplace, son of our great middle state, 
New York — the man of large ideas and easy 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 32 

circumstances. He has always at hand the 
friendly glass of wine, fragrant as the breath 
of many flowers, and a good cigar, equally 
fragrant and enticing. He knows the world 
and has laid hold of its life with hearty good 
will. He is, in fact, a man of the world in the 
best sense of that phrase. A brave heart, full 
of hope and cheer, goes with him in every jour- 
ney. He may outwit me, but he will not pick 
my pocket. He may make for himself too good 
a bargain, but he will not split the cent when 
it comes to the casting up of accounts. If, 
perchance, he should prove a rascal, his will be 
no pilfering rascality. To the assault upon 
my money he will add no stench of meanness to 
distress my nostrils. 

XIX 

Consume little time in regret. The best re- 
pentance is reformation. What tears of con- 
trition are powerless to effect, an altered life 
easily accomplishes. 

XX 

His life only is worthless who fails of discov- 
ering the worth in other lives. 

XXI 

There are few kindhearted sentimentalists 
in this sorrow-stricken world of ours. The 



S4 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

sentimentalist, wherever you find him, is natu- 
rally selfish and cruel. Sterne could write like 
an angel, but he had no more regard for his 
fellowmen than one might expect the devil him- 
self to display in dealing with high or low, the 
living or the dead. Sterne was absolutely de- 
void of anything like pity or compassion. 
While he wept over the distress of those who 
surrounded him and whose lives were in close 
proximity to his own, he increased the troubles 
he lamented, made sport of tears and grief, and 
laughed at the bitterness of human anguish. 
Men admired his genius and will always admire 
it, but no one ever loved him. His own wife 
fled from him as from " plague, pestilence, and 
famine." The author of " Tristram Shandy " 
wrote lines that we must account among the 
most beautiful in English literature. It may 
not be amiss in this connection to quote 
them: 

" The accusing spirit which flew up to heaven's 
chancery with the oath blushed as he gave it in; 
and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, 
dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out 
forever." 

Thus was Uncle Toby's oath disposed of by 
angelic beings who felt a pity that Sterne could 
only describe. Strange it is that one who could 
tell us how " God tempers the wind to the shorn 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 35 

lamb " knew only the art of shearing the lamb 
Heaven could encircle with compassion. 

Rousseau was another man of the same tem- 
per and spirit, and of a much worse life. He 
could sob as though his heart must break the 
while he was breaking the hearts of those 
around him. Over well-nigh every graceful line 
he composed, the trail of the serpent is dis- 
cernible. He was the prince of sentimentalists. 
His written paragraphs, well-nigh as tearful as 
were his spoken words, will in all the years to 
come delight those who find pleasure in literary 
art, but the man himself was false at heart and 
no one will ever rise to call him blessed. 

Goethe was of all modern writers one of the 
greatest, but he was in every sense of the word 
a sentimentalist. The man who could write 
" The Sorrows of Young Werther " and " Elec- 
tive AfRnities " was, if not a sorrow-maker, at 
least no assuager of grief. He was not com- 
passionate, nor was he sympathetic, forgiving, 
and kind. Men point to the fact that he cher- 
ished no violent animosities, but they forget 
that he was not a violent man. His general 
attitude was one of indifference. Violence and 
indifference seldom go together. He was self- 
centered, as are all sentimentalists, and there is 
nothing in the service he rendered Schiller that 
can in any wise cancel his self-absorption and 
self-love. His world-wide and penetrating vis- 



36 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

ion and his uncommon knowledge of men and 
more especially of women, are not matters of 
the heart as are compassion and sympathy. 
He was a calm, serene, unclouded, indifferent 
man, who could dip his pen in the tears of oth- 
ers and write with marvelous grace of what he 
could only see and never feel. 

XXII 

The professional reformer may be distin- 
guished by nothing else, but he will always and 
at every time display a bad taste extremely 
wearisome to all who have any sense of pro- 
portion. 

XXIII 

Culture is not so much something we have 
as it is something we have absorbed, and that 
has become a part of us. It is a state rather 
than a possession. It is that within us by 
means of which we enjoy beauty of whatever 
kind. 

XXIV 

" The truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth 1 " Did ever angel in heaven or 
man on earth succeed in telling the truth after 
that fashion? And yet there is not a little 
Justice of the Peace in all the length and 
breadth of our land who does not feel called 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 37 

upon to demand from every witness who comes 
before him a divine veracity of which he is him- 
self as incapable as his fellow mortals. To 
hear the lawyers and doctors of divinity dis- 
cuss, one would think that they all had truth 
and the well in their back yard. 



XXV 

" Away with remorse ! " cries La Mettrie, the 
gay and brilliant author of " L'Histoire Natu- 
relle de I'Ame " ; « it is a weakness, an outcome 
of education." What a pity it is La Mettrie 
was not near by to comfort Judas Iscariot, the 
Emperor Nero, Charles IX of France, and 
Benedict Arnold, when those great men were 
ruthlessly crushed beneath the iron heel of that 
*' outcome of education." With what enchant- 
ing grace and ease the hand that penned 
" L'Homme-machine " waves away all that self- 
reproach and self-revenge which made a mon- 
arch's blood to ooze through the pores of his 
skin, and to start from the corners of his eyes 
and from his nostrils. Could that monarch 
only have known that all his self-accusations 
were but " weakness and the outcome of educa- 
tion," great would have been his peace of mind, 
even when forced to contemplate the Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew's Day. Poor Judas! — 
his death was entirely due to over-education. 



38 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

XXVI 

He who holds the realization of his highest 
ideal essential to success must be content either 
to cherish a poor ideal or to inscribe " failure " 
over his best endeavors. We all come short of 
our possibilities and of our dreams, but it does 
not follow that life is a failure. Success must 
be measured by the grand result rather than by 
the far-away ideal. 

XXVII 

With known conditions we can deal, but with 
the unknown we need give ourselves no concern, 
since they are beyond our reach. It is the un- 
certain conditions, partly known and partly 
unknown, that cause us to worry. All friction 
is on the surface. Storms rage where wind and 
sea meet. In both upper air and ocean depths 
all is tranquility. Worry exists where the 
known and the unknown meet to form uncer- 
tainty. There it is that we fret and fume. 
Why may we not treat alike the unknown and 
the uncertain, refusing to concern ourselves 
with both of them? The certain only will be 
left, and with it we may hope to deal. 

XXVIII 

The phrase " naked truth " is a phrase only, 
and to it nothing in man or nature corresponds. 



PHILOSOPHY AND OPINION 39 

All things in this world are clothed, tempered, 

and adapted. 

XXIX 

The fanatic swings his fancied truth as a 
savage swings his club — regardless of conse- 
quences, while the reasonable man uses truth 
in ways and proportions that help his fellows. 
Too much truth spoken at the wrong time may 
be more injurious than open falsehood. There 
are, according to Margaret Deland, " unscru- 
pulous truth-tellers." These believe it to be 
always a man's duty to disclose the entire truth 
at whatever cost to the person to whom the 
disclosure is made. You may kill the person, 
but you have discharged your duty and un- 
burdened your conscience. 

XXX 

Yesterday is dead. It has done its work 
and lives no more. One may regret its fail- 
ures, but nothing remains save to give it decent 
burial. 

XXXI 

My thoughts, opinions, and beliefs are pri- 
vate property. They are wholly mine, and no 
one may meddle therewith; nor may the tenure 
with which I hold them be disputed. But what 
I feel I share with others. Feeling is common 
property. It is the heart and not the head 
that binds me to my race. 



Ill 

ORACLES AND COUNSELS 

Eat laurel, chew it, bite it with your teeth. 

— Sophocles. 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 



No man ever dreamed himself into either 
earthly or heavenly wisdom. No man ever 
wished himself into a character. If one would 
have these he must endure hardness ; and to the 
hardness there must be added continuance in 
well-doing. There is in morals a certain 
" squatter sovereignty " whereby continued ex- 
ercise of a grace or virtue renders that grace or 
virtue the possession of the man who exercises 
it. Shakespeare makes one of his characters 
advise that if one be without a virtue he as- 
sume it. Therein lies a world of philosophy. 
Assume the virtue long enough, and moral 
" squatter sovereignty " perfects the title. 
True culture has in it a certain element of 
hardness, to which is added continuance. The 
Sacred Writer puts it in a line : " Having 
done all, stand." 

II 

Never imagine thyself to be what thou art 
not, lest the contrast make thee unhappy with- 
out rendering thee better. Thou hast no more 
43 



44 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

right to intoxicate thyself and confuse thine 
understanding with idle fancies and silly con- 
ceits than with strong drink — both are mock- 
ers and do thee harm. Halo thy head with no 
false glory, and burn no sacrilegious incense 
before thy soul, but strive to view thyself in 
the clear light of truth. 

Ill 

" Vetulam suam prcetulit immortalitati" — 
and so Ulysses chose the aged Penelope, when 
Calypso would have given him herself and im- 
mortality. The philosophy of that old heathen 
is good for all ages and religions. Better than 
immortality is duty well performed in the face 
of every allurement. Live a loyal and true 
life to-day, and thou hast truly lived, even 
shouldst thou never live again. 



IV 

If there is no judge in heaven, there is surely 
all the greater need for a judge within thine 
own heart. 



All God requires of any of His children is 
faithful discharge of duty in the place to which 
He assigns the obedient soul. It is not neces- 
sary to do some great thing in order to secure 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 45 

the Divine blessing and the approval of con- 
science. " Do to-day thy nearest duty," 
whether it be pleasant or otherwise, and thou 
shalt well answer the end of life. 



VI 

Consider the magnitude of time. An hour 
is exhaustless. No one ever emptied a second. 
As animalculae swim without sense of confine- 
ment in a drop of water, so our lives float in 
the present moment. We never live in more 
than one second at a time, and yet we experi- 
ence no constraint and have all the space we 
require. We cry for more time, and cannot 
dispose of what we already have. We possess 
not too little, but too much ; we waste what we 
have. We nibble at an hour, and then leave it 
for another, as a mouse gnaws at a cheese many 
times its size, and which it cannot devour. 
Men are praying for eternity who wasted yes- 
terday, and are utterly unable to dispose of 
to-day. Before the day arrives it has no ex- 
istence, and when it is over there still remains 
to it no existence. Thus are all our marks 
upon the sand washed out by the flowing tides 
of a sea no man may compass. To one who 
has been dead a day it is practically the same 
to him, so far as this earth is concerned, as if 
he had been in the grave a hundred thousand 



46 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

centuries. The shallowest grave is bottomless ; 
and yet into a grave so deep the human soul 
looks with unshaken confidence, and dares to 
exclaim, " This corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
tality." 

VII 

The honors and pleasures of this world, and 
it may be of other worlds as well if such ex- 
ist, are for the men and women who have cour- 
age to take them. Strong, self-reliant souls 
spend no time in foolish regret, but reach out 
in every direction and appropriate to their own 
use whatever is fitted for their service. Au- 
dacity wins by divine right of conquest. Think 
meanly of yourself, and the world will take you 
at your own estimate. 

VIII 

If the source of all wrongdoing is in the will, 
so also is the hidden root of every worthy ac- 
tion. Not what I am, but what I would be is 
the one important thing. Whether I perceive 
it or not, I am proceeding in the direction of 
my desire. 

IX 

Every man is his own Adam, and every 
woman is her own Eve. The story of creation 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 47 

starts over again in every cradle and ends in 
every new-made grave. 

X 

The suppression of knowledge on the ground 
of expediency is like the quenching of the sun. 
The Man of Galilee said, " I am the Light of 
the world." That in some measure should 
every man be. What new truth I possess must 
be imparted. The good man is a socialist 
when he comes to the field of ethics. 

XI 

Truth casts off first this creed and then 
that, as the serpent sheds year after year its 
once bright and glittering skin. The integu- 
ment, becoming dry and useless, must perish, 
but the living creature survives. Let no man 
mourn for Truth. 

XII 

When in his own bosom man enthrones the 
dream and neglects the reality; when he exalts 
the idea and forgets the prior and superior 
claim of the deed, thus preferring the shadow 
to the substance; when he has made this final 
and supreme choice of the unreal, putting aside 
life itself for the passing emotions engendered 
by life, then has his doom been pronounced. 
Then is his service forever ended. 



48 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XIII 

Man is the measure of his own universe. 
Of every circle he is the centre. Only that 
which reflects his age-long conflict with destiny 
has for him enduring interest. 

XIV 

When the intellect announces to man's spir- 
itual nature that he is at liberty to believe 
what pleases him, and that it is a matter of 
no consequence to what conclusions he may 
arrive, the spiritual nature is in most cases 
ready to respond, " I believe in nothing." 
There remains to be taken but one more men- 
tal step, and that is the conversion of negation 
into a philosophical system. Such conversion 
we have in Schopenhauer's pessimism and von 
Hartmann's exposition of the doctrine of the 
innate evil of all things which Edgar Saltus has 
called " The Philosophy of Disenchantment." 

XV 

They only are elect who elect themselves. 
The work must have in it some worthy or, at 
least, some unusual element. Cistacious made 
so gracious an obeisance to Eternal Forgetful- 
ness that even the silent genius of Oblivion 
spared his name, and would have spared more 
had there been more to spare. Not one mason 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 49 

of all those who labored in the building of the 
Temple of Diana has left to us even his name, 
but it is known to every schoolboy that Heros- 
tratus burned that sacred structure. Time, 
which has effaced with ruthless hands so many 
worthy names, has embalmed in history the less 
worthy name of " the aspiring youth that fired 
the Ephesian dome." 

XVI 

We need to be constantly warned against 
imagining " we are the people, and wisdom will 
die with us." We are not the sole repositories 
of all truth. The builders of the pyramids 
thought they were standing on the summit of 
masonry and architecture. The men who blew 
Egyptian glass four thousand years ago, who 
distilled attar of roses three thousand years 
ago, and who divided the land of Syria by 
means of geometry, all believed they had found 
out the last secret of God and nature. But 
they were mistaken, and we are equally mis- 
taken when we imagine that God has nothing 
more to reveal to posterity, because we have 
discovered the final secret. 

XVII 
No victory is final that is not just. 



50 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XVIII 

In the end a man's rights and his necessities 
are one. 

XIX 

All private ownership in truth is moral rob- 
bery. 

XX 

What we call cooperation is usually nothing 
but compromise, and compromise means the 
annihilation of personality. I am weary of 
patched-up agreements that destroy individual 
action and purpose. The men who have in- 
fluenced others have acted apart from them. 
The strong swimmer sinks when he is seized in 
a death-grip by the drowning man he would 
save. We help men most when we remain 
apart from them ; when we grasp them, and 
will not permit them to grasp us. 

XXI 

I MUST not only impart what truth I pos- 
sess, but I must also welcome new truth from 
whatever source. To reject any truth because 
it seems to contradict a preconceived opinion, 
is to quench the light ; and of all sins those 
against light are the most deadly. I must tell 
the truth and shock the world. 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 51 

XXII 

Clear discernment and frank acknowledg- 
ment of good qualities in a foe are the surest 
signs of true nobility of character. 

XXIII 

He has the largest life who lives in the lives 
of the largest number of people. 

XXIV 

Let the gentleman keep his distance if he 
would be accounted a gentleman. All cheap 
familiarities disgust. Noble qualities demand 
large space for growth. We cannot honor 
each the other at too close a range. Many 
logs piled upon the fire may extinguish the 
flame. An over-display of affection will de- 
stroy what measure of real affection there ac- 
tually is. 

XXV 

" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ; " 
this is surely a rule than which none can be 
more golden, for therein is taught a kind of 
self-love that is never selfish. We can love 
others only when we have learned to love our- 
selves in a noble and generous fashion. 



52 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

XXVI 

Sidney wrote, " Look in thy heart, and 
write." I should think a glance at one's own 
heart would render writing difficult. Why not 
look at the needs of others, so far as they may 
be discovered, and write with them in view? 

XXVII 

" Live while you live " is the motto of thou- 
sands who have never lived at all. 

XXVIII 

An ounce of enterprise is worth a pound of 
privilege. 

XXIX 

Theke is no medicine in the wisdom of this 
world that can make a blind eye see God. 

XXX 

To-day neglected is to-morrow lost. 

XXXI 

Now that every house has its clock and 
every man his watch, are not our days " cut 
and hacked wretchedly into small portions ? " 
And are not our lives in danger of becoming 
entirely mechanical under the constant swing- 
ing of pendulums and uncoiling of mainsprings? 
It is the time element that so impoverishes our 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 53 

work; and he who obsequiously complies with 
the humors of men, and fulfils the letter rather 
than the spirit, is correctly called a time- 
server. 

The best things cannot be finished on time. 
Michael Angelo must work when the spirit is 
upon him. Great frescoes and cathedrals grow 
out of the minds that conceive and execute 
them, as trees rise from the earth. He who 
would perform his task well must make of it no 
task at all. No great deed can ever be per- 
formed in the workshop of time. 

Count time as you please — by lunar, solar, 
siderial, or tropical years — and it is all the 
same; one year is as good as another. Any 
one of them might as well end in June as in 
December. All these boundary lines are wholly 
imaginary, and every moment marks the ex- 
piration of twelve months. " No rising sun 
but ligJits a new year," December comes to an 
end, and at midnight the sun completes its 
revolution through the elliptic, and the earth 
its circuit round the sun; but faith hears no 
song in the heavens, and science discovers no 
clicking of celestial machinery and no rush of 
aerial currents. As ships cross lines of lati- 
tude and longitude without experiencing any 
change in temperature, so the ship of human 
life sails over the years and marks not the 
passage. 



54 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

And how variable and unreliable is the hu- 
man perception in this matter of time. Have 
as many clocks and watches as you please, 
still " we live in feelings, not in figures on a 
dial, and count time by heart-throbs." We 
believe our own pulses against all the chro- 
nometers in the world. We may whisper to 
ourselves, " There are but sixty minutes in one 
hour ; " nevertheless the happy hours fly and 
the sad ones creep.^ 

XXXII 

Men ask for criticism, but you will be safe 
only when you give them praise. It is what 
they want. " A rose by any other name would 
smell as sweet," but it must be a rose. 

XXXIII 

The riddle of the universe it is not ours to 
solve. To discover duty is our noblest quest, 
and to do it our best achievement. 

XXXIV 

Too close an inspection of truth results in 
fanaticism, while the entire neglect of it begets 
within us a fixed habit of dishonesty. Truth 

1 This paragraph appears in two of Dr. Marvin's books, 
and it has been thought best to retain it in this connec- 
tion though it is also part of another excerpt which may- 
be found on page 24 of this book. 



ORACLES AND COUNSELS 55 

must be tempered to the mind that is to re- 
ceive it. 

XXXV 

Love your friends and forget your enemies. 
Love brings with it a sense of reality, but for- 
getfulness breathes over all the spirit of 
oblivion. To forget is to annihilate, at least 
for the time being; while love is, in its nature, 
creative. 

XXXVI 

Yesterday is remembrance, and to-morrow 
faith. 

XXXVII 

The world belongs to those who best serve it. 

XXXVIII 

Show your sore only to God and your physi- 
cian. Personal troubles have little interest for 
strangers and are likely enough to disgust 
friends. 

XXXIX 

The way to win friends is to betray little 
need for them. When you want the world it 
will not want you. The unfortunate are un- 
attractive. 

XL 

The fenced field makes fast friends. 



56 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XLI 

When we speak we remember yesterday, but 
it is more important that we anticipate to- 
morrow. 



IV 

CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, AND HEROISM 

Cities are governed, so are houses too, 
By wisdom, not by harp-playing and whistling. 

— Menedemus. 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, AND HEROISM 



The heroism of medical men is astonishing 
when one considers how little applause it wins. 
We all admire the brave soldier who follows his 
flag into the thickest of the fight. If he is dis- 
abled through wounds received in battle how 
gladly we vote him a pension. But the daring 
of the doctor is greater than that of the sol- 
dier. The latter goes into battle to the sound 
of martial music, surrounded by enthusiastic 
comrades, while the physician, alone and with 
no public demonstration of approval, enters 
the pest-house and there calmly and without 
ostentation ministers to suffering humanity. 
The soldier is not rendered by his peculiar 
training more sensitive to the perils of his dan- 
gerous profession. On the contrary, the more 
extensive his training and experience, the more 
indifferent he becomes to danger. It is not so 
with the educated physician. To his cultivated 
mind a thousand risks in the matter of con- 
tagion, of which the ordinary man knows noth- 
ing, are clear and distinct. The civilized world 
59 



60 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

was moved to admiration by the story of Father 
Damien's courage and self-sacrifice. The priest 
went to live with lepers on the Island of Molokai 
in order to minister to them in spiritual things. 
But when in a southern country I visited a leper 
hospital I found there, hard at work and with 
no thought of danger or of disgust at the loath- 
someness of the disease, a number of able physi- 
cians and eflScient nurses. Brave, patient, self- 
sacrificing, loyal to the spirit of science, those 
noble men and women were working day and 
night to help and comfort the distressed. 

II 

The inherent gladness of genuine courage, 
whether physical or moral, is exhibited with 
peculiar force in the literature of the ancient 
Greeks, and may be viewed upon many a page 
of Homer. Always the heroes turn them to- 
ward the sunrise. They delight in the uncon- 
ventional freedom of the natural world, and are 
at home under twinkling stars and swinging 
boughs. 

Ill 

Civilization is the triumph of society. 

IV 

It may be that our revolutionary fathers 
were far above the average in honesty, but they 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 61 

certainly could not, all of them, have believed 
the Declaration of Independence, which they 
nevertheless signed ; that is to say, they could 
not have believed it In anything but a Pick- 
wickian sense. When they signed the docu- 
ment, with its statement that " all men are 
born free and equal," they knew very well that 
slavery was a part of their system. They 
knew also that the " inalienable " rights named 
in the Declaration were not Inalienable. And 
they knew many other things which the children 
who came after them never gave them credit 
for knowing. It Is astonishing how Glory takes 
to the woods when History turns upon her the 
blaze of a searchlight. If we would fare bet- 
ter with our children and stand well with our 
consciences. It is incumbent upon us to do better 
while we have the opportunity. 

V 

It Is generally believed that the majority 
should rule, but I think our world would be in 
a much better condition were the minority in 
power. The few are wiser than the many. 
The opinion of a judge is usually worth more 
than that of a jury. 

VI 

The rule of the majority is often a very un- 
worthy one. Good government is the gift of 



62 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

the trained few to the incompetent and thought- 
less multitude. 

VII 

The voices that shouted, " Hosanna to the 
Son of David ! " cried a few hours later, " Cru- 
cify Him ! Crucify Him ! " Popular ap- 
plause and popular clamor come in the end to 
one and the same thing. The statue and the 
hemlock are never far apart. 

VIII 

The men who traveled on the Titanic be- 
lieved that ship unsinkable, and they believed 
it even when the great vessel was making ready 
for its final plunge. Men are equally sure that 
our present civilization is imperishable, and 
yet there are now on every side ominous signs 
that should awaken in thoughtful minds anxiety 
if not actual alarm. The tap-root of every 
civilization is buried deep in its aristocracies ; 
these are the depositories of ancient superi- 
orities. Under the leveling processes of De- 
mocracy all these are rapidly disappearing. 
What is to take their place in this world, re- 
ceiving and preserving the sacred deposit of 
the ages.? 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 63 
IX 

Civilizations have passed away, some of 
them leaving to our world treasures in art and 
letters that must always delight the cultivated 
mind. Our present civilization in no essential 
feature differs from those that have preceded 
it. It is disintegrating; and all history shows 
us that, while the process of disintegration may 
be at first, and for a long time, slow, a fearful 
momentum will be later acquired. The final 
plunge, alike in the Atlantic liner and in the 
great Ship of State, must be sudden. It may 
be in one case an iceberg that brings about the 
catastrophe, and in the other some extensive 
strike of workmen, a contested election, internal 
dissension, or the treachery of an ambitious 
man. Unless some force can be brought to 
bear capable of resisting the downward leveling 
of Democracy, the final plunge must be sooner 
or later taken. 

X 

Whether a flag is worth fighting for will 
depend upon what that flag stands for. Un- 
conditional loyalty to any country is treason 
to mankind. 

XI 

No government can long endure that rests 
upon the unenlightened judgment of the un- 
trained masses. 



64. THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XII 

War will become a thing of the past when 
the common men of all lands refuse to leave 
farm and shop, and say to governments of 
every kind, " We will not fight." All must 
refuse if the movement is to succeed. If a few 
hold back and refuse to fight, they must be 
accounted guilty of treason. The movement 
must cease to be treasonable by becoming 
general. No single nation can disarm. If 
the German Empire can spend forty years in 
preparing to subjugate Europe, then Europe 
must spend those same forty years in prepar- 
ing to prevent that subjugation. The common 
people in all lands must act together. When 
they do so act, there will be no more war. The 
common men are the men that are killed in 
battle. Most of those who enlist and nearly 
all who are drafted are from the humbler walks 
of life. That is because most of the men and 
women in all lands are born and live in the lowly 
homes and occupations of the world. The few 
are educated, and still fewer may be trusted 
with the care of property and the great enter- 
prises of this world, all of which render them 
far too valuable to be wasted in a bloody bat- 
tle. Their education enables them to avoid in 
many ways the common conscription. Know- 
ing more than the average men and women of 
the world, they know the various ways of es- 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 65 

caping duties and dangers that others must 
face with what courage they may. There is a 
way of escaping almost everything if you only 
know the way. Educated men know many ways 
and many things of which the uneducated are 
ignorant. 

It is said that most of the taxes are paid by 
the poor. There is much truth in the saying. 
There are various ways of avoiding taxation. 
Some of those ways are dishonest, and some of 
them involve no breaking or evading of law. 
Education helps a man here as elsewhere. The 
professional classes, as a general thing, do not 
go to war. They are of less use in the army 
than are men of affairs. When men of culti- 
vated mind do go, they are usually commis- 
sioned officers, chaplains, surgeons, or engineers, 
and as such are not wanted on the firing line. 
They also may resign if they wish. The dan- 
gers, burdens, and hardships of war fall to 
common men, whilst the emoluments and advan- 
tages go to the privileged few. It would be a 
blessed thing if the common men of all nations 
could combine and refuse to fight. We have 
already learned not to waste men of genius and 
of exceptional ability upon war; how long will 
it be before we learn that common men have a 
value, and are not to be wasted on shot and 
shell! 

The rights of common men will not be re- 



66 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

spected so long as the military idea prevails. 
German Imperialism is opposed to both mod- 
ern civilization and the rights of ordinary men. 
Civilization rests upon the people, while Im- 
perialism looks to the army. The German Em- 
peror said, " The army is the foundation of 
the social structure of the Empire. . . . The 
soldier and the army, not parliamentary ma- 
jorities and decisions, have welded together the 
German Empire. My confidence is in the 
army; — as my grandfather said at Coblentz, 
' These are the gentlemen on whom I can 
rely.' " 

What the Emperor thinks of the people may 
be learned from one of his addresses as reported 
by a German professor, the distinguished Dr. 
Ludwig Gurlitt. This is what the Emperor 
said : " The masses are children not yet of 
age. The government alone is competent to 
prescribe the course of their social and cul- 
tural development." The Emperor is Ger- 
many. It is his prerogative to govern alone, 
with no responsibility of any kind. His word 
is law. Of course that means despotism pure 
and simple. The common man can have no 
rights under such a system. 

In order to carry out the German program 
It is necessary to shut off criticism. The light 
must be extinguished. It is a rule with the 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 67 

English royal family that no member of it, 
from the King himself down to the least im- 
portant person connected with him, is ever to 
bring an action for libel, no matter how vile 
the slander may be. The German Emperor 
takes a more drastic method of procedure. 
All criticism of the sovereign is leze majesty, 
no matter how just and wholesome it may be. 
If you say anything about the Emperor of 
which he does not approve, he may send you 
to prison. The man who is placed above 
criticism is also placed above responsibility. 
You cannot call him to account for anything. 
Under such a system neither the common man 
nor any other kind of a man can have a guar- 
anty that his rights will be protected. He has 
no rights to protect. 

All absolutists hate free institutions. Thus 
Bismarck did not like the United States. He 
was born under an absolute monarchy and he 
was a believer in militarism, and it grieved him 
to see German boys emigrate to our American 
Republic. Why should they wish to leave the 
Fatherland and live all their days under a con- 
stitutional government.? He could not see, or 
rather he would not see, that only under free 
governments like those of England and America 
the common man possesses rights that must be 
respected by all. 



68 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XIII 

History bears strange testimony against our 
human race. Its pages are filled with battles 
and colossal outrages, and reddened from first 
to last with human blood. But what we so 
often call history is not history in the best 
sense of that word. Some day we shall have 
a real history concerning itself with useful dis- 
coveries and inventions and with the advance 
of civilization. Our books of every kind are 
reverberant with the names of heroes — Alex- 
ander, Caesar, Napoleon; but the men who in- 
vented the useful and common appliances of 
every-day life are wholly forgotten. What did 
the conquerors named, and more like them, do 
for mankind? Is the world better for their 
having lived ? No ; they deluged the earth with 
blood, burned cities, murdered thousands of 
men and women, and orphaned millions of chil- 
dren. Yet history mainly concerns itself with 
the recording of their names and deeds. 

XIV 

When Memorial Day comes around I hear 
voices crying from the dust : " Fewer flowers 
for our graves, and more loyalty to the insti- 
tutions for which we were willing to perish! 
Fewer celebrations of our valor, and more of 
the spirit that made that valor possible! The 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 69 

wreaths of the coward and of the politician 
mock the memory of the hero ; the courage of 
the good soldier is best honored by the faith 
and virtue of the generations that follow after." 

XV 

Universal suffrage is only glorified mob- 
rule; a sort of ragamuffin respectability. 

XVI 

No one who knows anything about the glory 
and worth of patriotism will wish to belittle 
that love of country which lies at the founda- 
tion of civil government, but there are nobler 
sentiments than ordinary love of country. The 
love of mankind is greater than that of a com- 
paratively small number of men and women 
who live in one place and speak the same lan- 
guage. The love of God comes before all other 
loves, and may even lead us to refuse aid to 
the land of our birth when that land is ranged 
against what is worthy of support. " My 
country, right or wrong," is an evil motto, and 
unconditional loyalty is disloyalty to God be- 
cause it exalts one's country above its Creator 
and above the Creator of all lands and of the 
world itself. 

XVII 

It would be difficult to find a better illustra- 
tion of the peril of " brilliant generalization " 



70 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

than that which our own Declaration of Inde- 
pendence affords. The phrase, '' All men are 
born free and equal," when turned into the 
everyday English of common-sense, amounts 
to just this: All men are born equally helpless 
and dependent. It sounds well on paper to 
say, " All men are endowed with certain in- 
alienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness," but every well-instructed 
child knows that the verbal air-castle has only 
empty breath for its foundation. There is but 
one inalienable right, and that is the sublime 
right of doing one's duty. Life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness are alienated by the 
commission of crime, and even the innocent 
are at times justly required to give up one or 
all of these for the welfare of society at large. 
True liberty is attainable only through some 
degree of surrender, and it is an axiom, not in 
religious matters only but in secular things as 
well, that he who would find his life must lose 
it. Unrestricted liberty of action can exist 
only upon a desert island, where one man, with 
no human companion, is " monarch of all he 
surveys." 

XVIII 

TuRENNE displayed true courage when in 
the hour of battle he thus addressed himself: 
" You are trembling, carcass of mine ; you 



CIVICS, PATRIOTISM, HEROISM 71 

would tremble more could you know where I 
am going to take you." He was alive to the 
actual danger by which he was surrounded, and 
yet unshaken in his resolve to face without 
flinching every peril it was his duty to encoun- 
ter. Unknown and uncomprehended dangers 
may be encountered recklessly; only those evils 
which we see and understand admit of true 
bravery in the way in which we deal with them. 
Where there is no fear there can be no cour- 
age. He only who still desires to live can die 
the death of a brave man. The religious en- 
thusiast who, despising this world and longing 
for a better one, courts martyrdom, is no 
hero at aU when compared with the soldier who 
resolutely exposes himself to a death of inde- 
scribable agony from which every nerve in his 
body shrinks, and from which his whole soul 
recoils. Pale cheeks, bloodless lips, and trem- 
bling knees are not signs of cowardice when 
the soul remains dauntless. Sometimes the con- 
fession of cowardice indicates a certain degree 
of moral courage. With commendable candor 
Erasmus said of himself : " Non erat animus 
ad veritatem, capite, periclitarl; non omnes ad 
martyrmm satis hahent rohoris; vereor autem 
si quis incident tumtdtus, Fetrum sim imitor 
turns. ^^ But the same Peter who denied the 
Master afterward served him with fidelity, and 
died for him with unshaken courage. 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 

H yap iv r(o iroidv cvx^p^ui Kal rax^nys ovk ivTiO-qcTL 
Pdpo<s epyw fiovifiov, ovBe KaWovs d/cpt/Jetav* 6 8* ets rr/v 
yevecTLV tw ttovw TrpoBava(T6eL<s xpovo<s, Iv rfj (TOiTrjpia tov 
yevofievov ttjv Igxvv aTroStSwcriv. 

— Plutarch. 

O God, keep me from inability and laziness. 

— Mohammed. 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 



Work is honorable, and bread and butter are 
quite as respectable as are ortolan and choice 
wines. We are, most of us, created on the 
bread-and-butter side of life, and upon that side 
we are wanted. To improve the work that be- 
longs to us and that awaits us is much better 
than to do poorly work that does not belong 
to us. It was the enemy of mankind who whis- 
pered into the attentive but inexperienced ear 
of our great progenitor, " Ye shall be as 
gods " ; and it is the same old enemy that to-day 
whispers to the sons of men, " Leave off serving 
in humble stations, and you shall become the 
arbiters of destiny and the rulers of the 
world." Carlyle said in all his life no wiser 
words than these: "Work is man's true maj- 
esty." Said also the ancient Oracle, '' Do to- 
day thy nearest duty," — do it with all thy 
might, and do it well. 

In the old days in England service, like lord- 
ship, extended through many generations, and 
perfected itself with the years. Men were not 
ashamed of service. They contemplated with 
75 



76 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

noble pride the well-performed work of grand- 
father and great-grandfather, and it was their 
ambition to do their own work as well. The 
butler did not trouble his head with dreams of 
Parliament. Now no man will work if he can 
escape the necessity. Why should he perfect 
himself in that which he despises, and which he 
regards as nothing but a stepping-stone to 
something better? When you take the dignity 
out of labor, you destroy the quality and value 
of labor for all the world. 



II 

His lot is one of drudgery whose work is not 
a part of himself. 

Ill 

Haste is the great joy-killer. Slowly the 
child munches its sugared bun. With what 
leisure it sucks the candy. It would prolong 
the happy hour. Grown to man's estate, it will 
sip slowly the fragrant wine. Hurry destroys 
pleasure. It leads also to excess. In its foot- 
steps tread the glutton and the drunkard. I 
would sip the wine of life with grateful de- 
liberation. 

IV 

" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," 
and by their very audacity often win for them- 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 77 

selves a reward of which the angels never 
dreamed. 

V 

Make the most of yourself if you would have 
any one else make anything of you. "God 
helps them that help themselves." Think 
meanly of yourself, and the world will take you 
at your own estimate. A scientific man has as- 
sured us that in every drop of water there are 
latent forces powerful enough to shatter iron 
and granite. In every youthful heart are re- 
sistless energies strong enough to accomplish 
any possible task. And no man need go down 
into an obscure grave who has the wit and cour- 
age to keep out of it. 

VI 

It seems to be the peculiar mission of the 
trained nurse to furnish our sick and dying 
world with a unique picture of human selfish- 
ness. When the nurse has eaten her fill, out- 
slept the patient, and made sure of the two 
hours allotted her for recreation in the open 
air, the sick man will be welcome to what little 
time remains. Under her adroit manipulation 
the two hours will surely assume greater pro- 
portions, and if they do not broaden themselves 
out into three or even more hours, those who 
employ her may congratulate themselves. It 
may be truthfully said that to her other ac- 



78 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

complishments the trained nurse not infre- 
quently adds quickness of temper. She is not 
to be disturbed by any weak whim or passing 
desire of the patient. Her round is established 
by the physician, and an automatic obedience to 
the letter of his instructions crowds out every 
foolish suggestion of sympathy that may hap- 
pen to come to the surface. The training of 
nurses calls for reform. You cannot destroy 
selfishness by didactics, nor can you diffuse a 
spirit of kindness and humanity by the labora- 
tory and clinical instruction, but you can in 
large measure eliminate unworthy applicants, 
and impress it upon the minds of physicians 
that it is their duty to withhold from such ap- 
plicants not only indorsement but encourage- 
ment. 

There is " another evil under the sun." 
Many nurses have chosen their occupation be- 
cause of the opportunity it often furnishes of 
improving the social condition. Young women 
are naturally anxious to marry into social cir- 
cles above the humbler ones into which they were 
bom. It is no easy thing to climb, but to 
" mount," as Scripture expresses it, " upon 
eagle's wings," is a very different matter. 
Many a bright and beautiful girl has lived a 
useful but unwedded life and died an old maid 
because she was unwilling to live as her parents 
had lived before her. She wanted to rise, but 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 79 

she was unable to push herself into a circle in 
which she was not wanted and in which she was 
not known. Thus, also, has many a gifted au- 
thor failed of recognition because his publisher 
was too penurious to advertise his books and 
because the public was too stupid to find him 
out apart from the usual puffing and blowing 
that disgrace literature. Many a pretty and 
kindhearted girl, had she but tailor-made gar- 
ments, a jewel or two, and an introduction, 
might marry wealth and lead a life of ease if 
not of luxury. 

The trained nurse enters an aristocratic and 
beautiful home, not as a servant but as a pro- 
fessional attendant. It may be her duty to 
care for some unmarried man of youth and 
wealth. He very naturally comes to love her, 
and when he has recovered, his parents are sur- 
prised to discover that he has engaged himself 
to the charming nurse who made herself so 
essential to his comfort during the long days 
that he was alone with her. That some such 
affairs of the heart will develop is to be ex- 
pected, but when the occupation itself is viewed 
as a stepping-stone to opportunities of the 
kind, the occupation must become wholly mer- 
cenary, and must in time lose its real worth and 
value. If the trained nurse is to be of service 
to the sick, she must view her work very much 
as the physician views his. That attachments 



80 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

will in some cases occur is, as has been said, to 
be expected, but these should be incidental and 
not intentional. The young woman who looks 
upon her occupation as a trap with which she is 
to catch a wealthy husband as one would catch 
in its own peculiar trap a squirrel or a wood- 
chuck, she herself being the bait, degrades the 
occupation she follows. 

There are nurses who set the trap for an old 
fool of large means because his age is a promise 
of speedy reward. The older the fool snared, 
the sooner are his bones picked. One rosy- 
cheeked damsel, when asked how she could bring 
herself to marry such a decrepit old dotard, 
replied, " Oh, he won't last long ! " He lasted 
about a year, and, of course, his children were 
robbed by the young adventuress. 

And yet it cannot be denied that there are 
among our trained nurses some noble and de- 
voted women. The pay they receive is not 
small. They are, in fact, well paid, and they 
should be so paid. Many of them take great 
risks. Some of them care for those who suffer 
from contagious and infectious diseases. They 
go where the doctor goes and they face what he 
faces. A cynical acquaintance assured me that 
the nurses I described as noble and unselfish 
were, nearly all of them, homely and ill-favored 
and had corkscrew curls after the fashion of 
their great-grandmothers. He said they were 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 81 

brave and devoted because relieved of the temp- 
tations that surround laughing Allegra and 
bright-eyed Corinna. I do not share his cyni- 
cism. I am sure there are heroic hearts every- 
where. There are, beneath both ill-favored and 
beautiful forms and faces, souls that know the 
call of duty and that may be trusted without 
fear. 

VII 

The destiny of this world has been largely 
determined by the energy and resolution of 
young men. Alexander, at thirty-three years 
of age, " wept for want of more worlds to con- 
quer." Scipio Africanus had finished a " ca- 
reer of glory " before he was thirty-one. Pa- 
pinian became an oracle of Roman law at 
thirty-four. Charlemagne had made himself 
master of France and a part of Germany at 
twenty-nine. Raphael was not thirty when he 
began to be called the " Divine " Raphael. 
John Calvin, says Bancroft, " secured an im- 
mortality of fame " before he was twenty-eight. 
Milton had written his best miscellaneous poems 
at twenty-six. Isaac Newton had reached the 
pinnacle of his knowledge and fame at thirty. 
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood 
before he was thirty-four. William Pitt, the 
elder, waged war with Walpole at twenty-seven. 
Napoleon achieved his victories in Italy at 



82 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

twentj-eight, and the imperial crown at thirty- 
five. Byron had produced his most brilliant 
works at thirty-four. Pollock, the author of 
" The Course of Time," died at twenty-eight. 
Henry Kirke White was in his grave at twenty- 
one. Mozart, the great German musician, died 
at thirty-five. Lafayette was but twenty-three 
at the siege of Yorktown, and was commander- 
in-chief of the French national guards at 
thirty-two. Hamilton was Secretary of the 
United States Treasury at thirty-two. John 
Jay was Chief Justice of New York at thirty- 
two. Summerfield was only twenty-five at the 
period of his greatest fame as a preacher. 

All these made immediate and direct use of 
their faculties and of every opportunity. Most 
of them were self-reliant. Even the gentle and 
timid Henry Kirke White was not without a 
certain force of spirit. He who would suc- 
ceed must have not only the strength to wait, 
but the energy and courage to advance. The 
Patriarch wrestled with the angel all the night, 
and said, " I will not let thee go, except thou 
bless me." The blessing came. As a prince 
having power with God and man, he prevailed. 

VIII 

Our doctors plume themselves upon their 
charitable work, and yet it is only occasionally 
they perform a deed of professional kindness. 



TOIL AND ENDEAVOR 83 

They seldom attend the poor without compensa- 
tion. Rich patients pay for all that is done for 
the poorer ones. The doctors may boast of 
their charity, but they hasten to indemnify 
themselves when in their net they find a wealthy 
patient or two entangled. 



VI 

NATURE 

Autumn is a sad and sweet andante, which makes 
an admirable preparation for the solemn adagio 
of winter. 

— George Sand. 

The pomp of poppied-meadows, 
The revel of June roses. 
The revel of life made tipsy 
With vintages of laughter. 
Awake us, and we answer 
The call of day with music. 

— Richard Hovey. 



NATURE 



How beautiful is the quiet falling of the 
snow ! All the long day that magnificent dis- 
play goes on, and then, with countless stars in 
the silent heavens, night comes down, folding in 
its restful darkness the spectral landscape. 
Early morning adds to the white expanse its 
crimson and gold, and behold, the new-born 
splendor becomes a thing no human language 
may even remotely describe. Gravity and cohe- 
sion keep the heavenly bodies in their celestial 
orbits and hold revolving worlds together, yet 
are they silent as the descending snow and in- 
visible as the air we breathe. The resistless 
forces of Nature in the hazy warmth of a mid- 
summer noon lift thousands of tons of water 
from river and ocean, bear the glistening drops 
far above the highest mountains, and deposit 
them in the reservoirs of the clouds. The en- 
tire process goes on before our eyes in un- 
broken silence. In early spring millions upon 
millions of buds burst into fragrance and 
beauty without a sound, so that one might lodge 
in May or June in the very heart of a forest 
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88 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

and hear only the hum of an insect, the tread 
of a rabbit in the brush, or the sighing of the 
wind in the tree-tops. The wild rage of a fool 
might be heard miles away; the contending of 
many fools in battle might be heard a much 
greater distance; but God rolls this earth, 
twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, 
over the viewless carpet of space with less noise 
than a cricket makes on the hearth at night. 
Amid all our confusion and discord He moves 
with a serenity that means power and a gentle- 
ness that means love. 

II 

To see God in flowers, the grass, the trees; 
to hear Him in the song of birds, and in the 
music of wind and wave ; to commune with Him 
in the silence and darkness of night — thus to 
hold fellowship with the Eternal is something 
beyond the power of language to describe. All 
things are full of God to the soul that has 
learned to love Him. 

Ill 

When the hills, touched with frost in the 
early autumn, put on their beautiful robes, and 
all the forests are clothed in scarlet and gold, 
there is an attraction as strong and as gentle 
as any subtle influence that haunts the open- 
ing of spring-time or pervades the slumberous 



NATURE 89 

summer, heavy with heat and resplendent with 
canopies of living green. To know Nature at 
her best one must find her early and leave her 
late. Of the little villages in New England 
what can one know who has not seen in the 
month of May the apple-blossoms white like 
snow upon the overburdened boughs, and 
watched in the dreamy mists of Indian-summer 
the yellow sunsets fade into the purple shadows 
of October and November twilights. Every 
season has its peculiar beauty, and of each the 
words of an American poet are true: 

*' To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language.'* 

When the mind can comprehend that language 
and understand its message, the roaring winds 
of mid-winter have as sweet a music when for- 
ests bow them to the snowy earth and tall pines 
are splintered by the blast, as have the gentler 
voices of the spring-time in " the leafy month 
of June." The truth in Nature is the same 
truth we find in human life. Youth has its 
own peculiar attraction; so has manhood, 
stout-hearted, self-confident, and robust; and 
none the less has slowly advancing age. That 
the last of life is in no way behind the begin- 
ning in rich compensation, the gentle Words- 
worth knew right well when, by the quiet shores 



90 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

of Rydal Lake, he wrote those beautiful lines so 
often quoted, and yet of which we never weary : 

" But an old age, serene and bright. 
And lovely as a Lapland night. 
Shall lead thee to thy grave/' 

IV 

The naturalist, Karl Piotz, has given the 
scientific world thirty volumes, most of which 
treat of butterflies ; and in these are more than 
ten thousand illustrations from his own pencil. 
Karl Piotz's labors show us how vast are the 
resources of nature. Think of the countless 
millions of tiny creatures that float in the air 
and bask in the sunbeam. There are collections 
that contain seventy thousand distinct species, 
and new varieties are constantly coming to the 
knowledge of scientific men. Every drop of 
water, every grain of sand, every breath of air 
is crowded with living creatures ; and we our- 
selves are walking zoological gardens bearing 
about in our tissues trillions of animalculae. 
Both microscope and telescope open for us the 
doors of infinity, and disclose world within 
world and world upon world. A particle of 
dust floats through the open window and falls 
upon my desk. I can brush it away with my 
hand, or waft it into the air with my breath, 
and yet it is a microcosm having laws and a 
destiny of its own. 



NATURE 91 

In the last analysis the deepest ocean, and 
the highest mountain, and, indeed, " the great 
globe itself," are but vast collections of atoms. 
You may study and examine in any direction, 
and never come to a boundary. Upon all sides 
shoreless possibilities invite and challenge the 
mind of man. 

Is there discouragement in all this ? Is there 
not rather an exquisite delight, thrilling the 
soul and rousing it to renewed activity ? If the 
universe is shoreless, we are qualified to navi- 
gate its expanse; and if no harbor lies before 
us, no storm may engulf our bark. The intro- 
verted vision discovers the world of thought to 
be as vast as the material universe ; indeed, the 
problems of mind are far more wonderful than 
those of body. In all this there is an exhilara- 
tion which lifts from off us the low roof of con- 
ventional thinking and acting, and allows the 
wind of eternity to blow in upon us with free 
and joyous wing. The roof must be replaced 
with one more exalted, giving larger space for 
growth. That in time must disappear to make 
room for still another. And ever as we out- 
grow ourselves, we sing: 

" Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 



92 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea! " 



The ministry of Nature — what a priesthood 
and service! No gowned ecclesiastic, to the 
tinkling of silver bells and the dizzy blaze of 
superstitious lights, kneels at the altar of the 
hills. There, in silence, broken only by the 
songs of happy birds, descends the benediction 
of the Heavenly Father in sunlight and shadow 
upon the children of the Divine Love. 

VI 

We may learn a lesson from the grass that 
is so lowly no hurricane can dismantle it, so joy- 
ous and persistent that men have come to de- 
light in its wealth of perennial green. The 
baronial castles and ancestral halls of England 
are not more admired than are the emerald 
lawns that encircle them. 



VII 

KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 

There is perhaps, in all the Iliad, nothing more 
deep in significance — there is nothing in litera- 
ture more perfect in human tenderness and honor 
for the mystery of inferior life — than the verses 
that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at 
the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them 
by the greatest of gods. 

— RUSKIN. 



KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 



When Theodore Parker was a little boy 
his father walked with him one spring morning 
in a distant part of the farm. They passed 
a pond where was blooming a rhodora, which 
so attracted the boy's attention as to draw him 
to the water's edge, and there he saw a large 
spotted tortoise basking in the sunlight. Theo- 
dore had never killed any creature, but he had 
seen boys stone birds and squirrels and torment 
cats and dogs, and he at once seized a stick to 
follow their example and destroy the tortoise. 
But an unseen power restrained his arm and a 
voice within him said, " It is wrong." The 
child looked around and saw no one but his 
father. Fear seized upon him and he hastened 
to his mother in the utmost alarm and asked 
her what it was that told him it was wrong. 
The good woman, wiping the tears from her 
eyes, took the child in her arms and said: 
" Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to 
call it the voice of God in the soul of man. 
If you listen and obey it, then it will speak 
clearer and clearer, and always guide you right ; 
95 



96 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

but if jou turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it 
will leave you all in the dark and without a 
guide. Your life depends on your heeding that 
little voice." Theodore Parker lived to become 
a great scholar and distinguished preacher, but 
he never forgot that lesson, and always held 
conscience in supreme veneration. 



II 

There is nothing in the Bible, when rightly 
understood, to discountenance the belief cher- 
ished by our own Agassiz, and taught by Leib- 
nitz and the poet Coleridge — the belief that 
both man and beast enter upon a future life 
when the joys and sorrows of this are ended. 
And there is much in the unequal allotments of 
the life that now is, to render the immortality 
of the animal world highly probable. Here are 
two horses equally deserving of kind treatment, 
but one falls into the possession of a cruel man 
who is a stranger to mercy, and the other is 
owned by a man who illustrates the soul of 
Christian gentleness in the just and humane 
treatment of creatures dependent upon his will 
and pleasure. How shall God vindicate His 
justice and establish the equity of His unequal 
providence if there be no life for beasts of bur- 
den when the toils and hardships of this weary 
world are forever ended.'' " I will honestly con- 



KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 97 

fess," wrote Toplady, author of the beautiful 
hymn Rock of Ages, " that I never yet heard 
one single argument urged against the immor- 
tality of brutes which, if admitted, would not, 
mutatis mutandis^ be equally conclusive against 
the immortality of man." Mrs. Somerville, at 
the age of eighty-nine, wrote in her " Memoirs " 
as follows : " I cannot believe that any crea- 
ture was created for uncompensated misery; it 
would be contrary to the attribute of God's 
mercy and justice. I am sincerely happy to 
find that I am not the only believer in the im- 
mortality of the lower animals." The longer 
I live the more convinced I am that we all — 
men, beasts, birds, fishes and insects — are the 
creatures of a loving God, who will not allow a 
sparrow to fall to the earth without His notice, 
and I am willing to believe with the poor Indian 
who 

" Thinks, admitted to the equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

Ill 

Prayer 

Our heavenly Father, have mercy, we be- 
seech Thee, upon all animals of whatever kind, 
but especially upon such as must work for 
man's comfort and welfare. Give unto us and 
unto all men a gentle and compassionate spirit, 



98 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

that we may deal rightly with Thy creatures 
under all circumstances and at all times. Have 
peculiar mercy, we pray Thee, upon such ani- 
mals as have brutal owners, drivers, and mas- 
ters. Grant that we may, none of us, increase, 
through ignorance, thoughtlessness, selfishness, 
or violence of temper, the suffering of such of 
Thy creatures as must surrender their lives that 
we may have food. And, guided and directed 
by Thee, may we practice mercy and show a 
compassionate spirit in whatever measures we 
take for the destruction of such animals as must 
be destroyed for man's safety and welfare. In 
all our relations to living creatures may we be 
just, gentle, and kind, gratefully remembering 
the goodness of God to us in bestowing upon us 
human reason and sovereignty over all living 
creatures. These and all other good things we 
ask in the name of our Saviour who, when upon 
earth, said of the birds, " Not one of them is 
forgotten before God." Amen. 



VIII 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 

ZSot 8e 6eol Tocra Bolev ocra (fypecrl crycn fxevoLvd?, 
avSpa T€ Kal olkov kol 6/xocf)po(Tvvy]v OTrdo-eiav 
ia-dXrjv ov /xev yap Tovye Kpdcrcrov kol apeiov 
7] oO* ofxocfypoviovTe vorjfJLacriv oIkov e^qTov 
avqp rj^e yvvrj' irokX* dXyea BvafieveecrcrLV, 
Xdpfxara 8* evfieverrjm /idXiaTa 8c t' ckXvov avToL 

— Homer. 

The chief cause of love is juxtaposition. 

— Burton: "Anatomy of Melancholy." 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 



The men who have accomplished most owe 
much to woman's influence. From her counsel 
the hero derived his courage, and in her approv- 
ing smile received his reward. The great poems 
of the world are, many of them, from her in- 
spiration. Blanche of Lancaster lives in the 
antique English of Chaucer, Laura in the son- 
nets of Petrarch, and Beatrice in the Divina 
Commedia of Dante; and who can look upon 
the marbles of Michel Angelo and not behold the 
influence of Vittoria Colonna? In all literature 
there is not a nobler sonnet addressed by man 
to woman than this which Michel Angelo laid 
with bowed heart and reverent hand at the feet 
of Vittoria Colonna: 

" The might of one fair face sublimes my love, 
For it hath weaned my heart from low desires; 
Nor death I heed, nor purgatorial fires. 
Thy beauty, antepast of joys above, 
Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve; 
For, oh ! how good, how beautiful, must be 
The God that made so good a thing as thee. 
So fair an image of the heavenly dove. 
101 



102 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Forgive me if I cannot turn away 

From those sweet eyes that are my earthly 

heaven ; 
For they are guiding stars, benignly given 
To tempt my footsteps to the upward way; 
And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight, 
I live and love in God's peculiar light.** 



II 

There is a Supreme Affection that is not 
only pure, but that creates purity by its very 
presence. With contempt it gazes, when gaze 
it must, upon the infamy of lust and brutal 
appetite. It is an Affection worthy alone to 
be called Love. Resplendent with the golden 
light of the City not builded with hands, it wears 
upon its brow the ineffable smile of its Creator. 

Ill 

Then there is the marriage relation. How 
many wedded lives come to failure through 
ignorance. Men and women assume the most 
sacred responsibilities without preparation, and 
with no knowledge of themselves or of each 
other. We say in the marriage service, " Whom 
God hath joined together let no man put asun- 
der " ; but when God does not j oin, is there 
anything to sunder? Passion dies, novelty dis- 
appears, youth fades, and unless love be founded 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 103 

upon an Intelligent and mutual esteem, shall it 
not also crumble ? It has been said, " one can- 
not be at once lover and friend," but you may 
be sure one will not long remain the former who 
Is not as well the latter. We need to cultivate 
friendship. Passion will come and go like the 
shadows of clouds over the smooth surface of a 
lake, and no love Is abiding without friendship. 
He was right who exclaimed, " They who are 
joined by love without friendship, walk on gun- 
powder with lighted torches in their hands ! " 
They who build love upon the foundation of mu- 
tual esteem — 

** Make life, death, and that vast forever 
One grand, sweet song." 

IV 

Love must have in It something larger and 
nobler than passion. There must be oneness of 
sympathy, and delight in companionship 
founded upon a common ideal in life. Only 
through such an Ideal is It possible to rise above 
the vulgar littlenesses that make life barren. 
There seems to have been in the united lives of 
Lewes and the author of " Adam Bede " the 
ideal described. We find it in lesser degree, and 
yet as distinctly, in the love that made forever 
one the common destiny of Sir John Millals and 
the beautiful woman who was once the mismated 



104* THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

wife of Ruskin. This same ideal (though the 
marriage was in this case perfectly regular if 
we leave out of sight its clandestine and " run- 
away " features ) may be discovered also in the 
one life and aspiration of Robert and Elizabeth 
Browning. 



In ancient times and in the East nurses were 
held in greater esteem than now with us. 
Homer sang their praise ; Virgil celebrated their 
virtues; and Ovid extolled their wisdom and 
kindness. It is no trivial office to guide and 
direct the development of a child's life. The 
nurse is second mother, and her influence is 
sometimes, perhaps often, deathless as the soul 
she instructs. The Bible teaches respect and 
consideration for those who are socially be- 
neath us as servants, nurses, and dependent 
children of humble toil. The true lady takes 
her politeness into the kitchen ; it is her ability 
to do so that makes her the lady she is. Not 
fine manners in the ball-room, but a genuine 
and gracious dignity seasoned with womanly 
kindness, creates the true lady. Few think of 
the Bible as a book of social and domestic eti- 
quette, and yet such it is. Let a man follow 
its precepts, and he shall become not only a 
good man, but a gentleman; and whatever 
woman will conform to the spirit of the Sermon 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 105 

on the Mount shall find her life steadily de- 
veloping into all that makes a beautiful char- 
acter and fine address. 



VI 

Love letters are a literature in themselves, 
and are wholly unlike other kinds of composi- 
tion. Their writers, with marvellous delicacy, 
place upon paper what nothing could induce 
them to say with the living voice. Though the 
writer be no poet, yet in his letter crowded with 
fine figures of rhetoric, metaphors, and senti- 
mental and impassioned bursts of feeling. Not 
infrequently the composition deepens to a re- 
ligious intensity that touches the thought with 
something like inspiration. Letters of every 
kind but those of love go out of fashion. Tele- 
graph and telephone have rendered unnecessary 
much of our ordinary correspondence. Busi- 
ness letters are now typewritten by clerks and 
scribes of one kind or another; but always the 
love letter is a personal matter. No woman 
could endure a machine-made love letter. The 
charm of style, the delicate suggestiveness, must 
come from the very hand of the man beloved. 

VII 

There Is, however, another side to the so- 
called " race suicide " question. Mothers do 



106 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

not wish to feed the military glory of France, 
nor do they desire to feed that of any other 
nation with their own sons. The needs of the 
army and of the navy do not appeal to them 
under the circumstances named. The very fact 
that boys are wanted for such uses seems to 
them to furnish an excellent reason why boys 
should be hard to obtain. The old cry of pa- 
triotism with which the authorities were wont 
to fool the unwary has lost much of its power. 
Large families are not so desirable as are good 
ones ; and good families are not so likely to be 
large. Woman's function is not simply to bear 
children, but also to rear them ; and that not as 
food for powder, but as the supporters of so- 
ciety and good government. I doubt if the 
world would be in any wise injured were no chil- 
dren to be born during the next three years. 
The earth is well populated in all those portions 
where life is possible without great hardship. 
The increased cost of living has a decided ten- 
dency to restrict the size and open-handedness 
of the family. Comparatively few men can af- 
ford to marry in early life unless the bride 
brings a generous bestowment in money, and so 
it has come to pass that the dowry is an actual 
necessity. This necessity, of course, increases 
with the increasing size of the family. 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 107 
VIII 

How shall we strengthen love that it may en- 
dure when the fires of youth and passion are 
cold? Only by the cultivation of those noble 
virtues which, like bands of steel, weld together 
in one life and faith honest and pure hearts. 
How shall two hearts grow old together? Only 
by the persistent cultivation of those qualities 
which are ever young and which age not with 
declining years. The young man will not be 
guilty of an act tainted with meanness or base- 
ness lest the maiden he loves blot his image 
from the pure heaven of her heart ; let the young 
husband and wife cherish the same fear and 
honor, and they shall grow nearer and dearer 
as the years silver their brows. The happiness 
of marriage depends upon the very highest and 
most delicate of reserves, the most noble and 
careful speech, the best and most honorable 
perception; upon a kindness greater than that 
of a mother to her child. 

IX 

We have in the Bible pictures of womanly 
tenderness and nobleness, and also of womanly 
debasement unequaled in secular literature. I 
know how exalted are the women of Homer — 
" The Heroes' Battle-Prize," " The Heavenly- 
Minded," "The Sought-For," "The Sister 



108 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

of Heroes," "The Widely-Praised," "Rul- 
ing by Beauty," "The Far-Thoughted," 
"The Hospitable," "The Ship-Guider," and 
" The Web-Raveler " — names that indicate the 
queenly beauty of the women who bore them; 
but I search Iliad and Odyssey in vain for 
one trace of that glorified character, sub- 
lime self-sacrifice and unwavering faith which 
" crowned the daughters of Israel and 
made them daughters of Jehovah." On the 
other hand, Shakespeare's " Lady Macbeth " is 
weakness itself when, compared with Jezebel, 
who from the harem of Ahab mounted with 
blood-stained feet the throne of God's chosen 
people, and there defied the majesty of heaven. 



The supreme glory of consecrated woman- 
hood lies in the consecration itself. The love 
of God makes every other love immortal. 
What love through Him we give to others is 
forever. Only as we consecrate our lives to 
the Divine Love can we hope to become heavenly- 
minded; and they only consecrate themselves 
to the Divine Love who, in imitation of our 
Saviour, give heart and hand to the service of 
mankind. There is a fable that four young 
ladies, disputing as to the beauty of their hands, 
called upon an aged woman who had solicited 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 109 

alms, for a settlement of the dispute. The 
three whose hands were white and faultless had 
refused her appeal, while she whose fingers were 
brown and rough had given in charity. Then 
the aged beggar said : " Beautiful are these 
six uplifted hands, soft as velvet and snowy as 
the lily: but more beautiful are the two darker 
hands that have given charity to the poor." 
Learn the lesson of consecrated womanhood. 
In olden times, when the children of Israel pre- 
pared the Tabernacle in the wilderness, " all 
the women that were wise-hearted did spin with 
their hands, and brought that which they had 
spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, 
and of fine linen. And all the women whose 
heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' 
hair." The wise-hearted women of to-day are 
the daughters of modern Israel who from the 
love of God serve faithfully the great family 
of mankind. 

XI 

A VERY intelligent woman told the writer that 
the ferocity of the social judgment sprang from 
the most abject fear. " The woman who goes 
astray," she said, " endangers the home, which 
is woman's special province. If she goes un- 
punished, we may at any time lose a husband, 
and see a home broken up. When she tempts a 
man she wrongs a woman. Self-defense calls 



110 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

for the most desperate measures. We cannot 
take her life, but we can do more — we can 
crush her soul." I said, by way of reply: 
" Most women who fall are tempted by men 
before they in turn become tempters of men. 
I should think that of the two, the man would 
be usually the more guilty. Is it, then, reason- 
able to ruin the woman while the man goes un- 
injured and even unrebuked?" She answered, 
" We could not reach the man if we would. It 
is to keep him, and not to lose him, that we 
wage war upon the tempter. His sin may be 
before God as great as is that of the woman, 
but its effect upon the home is not so disas- 
trous." 

XII 

Most women have what we call the maternal 
instinct ; in some it is strong, and in others 
weak, but few are wholly without it. Where 
there are children, the instinct finds its own 
natural expression in all those tender endear- 
ments and noble self-sacrifices which render 
motherhood the divinely beautiful thing men 
have always believed it to be. But often 
(oftener now than in earlier days) marriage is 
not fruitful, and the maternal instinct, deprived 
of its natural outlet, usurps in some measure 
the place sacred to conjugal affection. With 
a love not wholly wifely but in part maternal, 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 111 

the woman encroaches upon the personal free- 
dom and manly independence of her husband. 
She has in one both husband and child. If it 
so happens that she is the older of the two, 
this encroachment becomes more decided, and, 
it may be, more harmful. 

XIII 

The social circle is feminine, and its verdict 
is always a woman's verdict. 

XIV 

Women are more chaste than men, but they 
have fewer temptations, less violent passions, 
and more to fear from the consequences of 
wrongdoing. They are less liable to be intem- 
perate and brutal, but they have more vanity 
and jealousy; these they do not always exhibit 
to the world, because they have tact to a degree 
seldom within the knowledge and practice of 
men. Women are more merciful, but men have 
a better sense of impartial justice. Women 
are sympathetic and compassionate, but they 
lack the force and energy of their brothers and 
husbands. 

XV 

Women, light of heart, paint in the gay col- 
ors of their cheerful and hopeful souls. They 
are born optimists, living near the surface, if 



112 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

not actually upon it. Men, too easily de- 
pressed, create for themselves a universe 
wherein the dog-star reigns. It is a universe 
in drab. The masculine temperament is reso- 
lute but not hopeful. Men sink their analysis 
to the inmost core of things. They themselves 
dwell deep down below the surface where the 
sunlight does not always penetrate. 



XVI 

To the human heart happiness is the very 
breath of life. We may not be able to say with 
Pope that it is " our being's end and aim," but 
experience proves it to be an essential element 
in well-being. There have been noble charac- 
ters matured in darkness, but for one such 
there have been thousands of stunted charac- 
ters that came to their ruin through want of 
light. We must have some measure of happi- 
ness ; without it the man is as a plant deprived 
of light. A happy home is no idle dream of 
the poet. In every age and land the heart of 
man demands it as an essential and supreme 
good. Domestic happiness may not be what 
Cowper calls it, " the only bliss of Paradise 
that has survived the fall," but it certainly is 
that without which life must lose no small part 
of its value. Home is, or should be, the place 
of confidence, where there are no masks and no 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 113 

suspicions. In every language under the sun 
the human heart voices through some proverb 
its conscious need of, and its dehght in, the do- 
mestic circle. It is said of an Englishman's 
house, " it is his castle " ; and again they tell 
us that " home is always home, be it never so 
humble." The French proverb runs, " To 
every bird its nest is fair." The German cries, 
" East and West, the home is best." In many 
a Spanish rhyme we read that " the smoke of 
one's own house is better than the fire of an- 
other's." 

XVII 

I DO verily believe that nine women out of 
ten would prefer a little garden filled with 
pretty flowers to the most beautiful lawn that 
ever stretched its carpet of green from private 
porch to public road. More attractive to 
dainty lady or thrifty housewife is a full-blown 
rose than the noblest tree that ever lifted giant 
branches to a cloudless summer sky or battled 
with mid-winter tempests. Yet when it comes 
to the selecting of a husband the whole outlook 
is changed. Women want the human oak and 
elm. But men wish for the flower, fragrant 
with womanly sweetness and radiant with smiles. 

XVIII 

Long engagements are of advantage to men, 
and of great disadvantage to women — they 



114 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

make saints of the former, and wall-flowers of 
the latter. 

XIX 

Of a certain very beautiful woman, I heard 
a man say : " I do not love her — I could not 
love her; and yet when I meet her I am con- 
scious of a shock as from an electric battery." 
Those words reminded me of the saying of 
Bacon : " There is no exquisite beauty with- 
out some strangeness in the proportion." The 
longer I think upon it, the more clearly it ap- 
pears that there is something in the highest 
development of beauty that not only charms but 
astonishes. Indeed, it is doubtful if true beauty 
ever exists apart from some degree of surprise. 

XX 

As ordinary and even trivial words when 
translated into pathetic music capture the most 
sluggish imagination and infuse into it new life, 
so a common nature, transfigured with beauty, 
wins its way to the hardest heart. Well writes 
the world's greatest poet, " All orators are 
dumb when beauty pleadeth." There is a 
beauty no artist can transfer to canvas, and 
no sculptor carve in marble: a beauty we can- 
not behold with the eye, nor describe with pen 
or voice : a beauty we can only feel as an unde- 
fined presence. Not all souls are sensitive to 



WOMAN, LOVE, AND HOME 115 

its influence. A certain spiritual clairvoyance 
is necessary in order to find it out, but when 
once it is discovered, its power over its discov- 
erer is resistless. We wonder what a certain 
woman could discern in a man who seemed to 
us dull and prosaic, that induced her to leave 
all and follow him. She was not deceived. 
There were qualities in his character and pres- 
ence we could neither see nor appreciate. 

A very shrewd and practical man once said 
to me : " Judged by the wisdom of this world, 
and by the rules and maxims of policy, I am 
a great fool to think of marrying the woman 
whose name I have given you; but I tell you 
honestly, that I would cheerfully give all I have 
and all I hope to have, might I but call her 
' wife.' " She was twenty years older than he, 
and socially his inferior; but they married and 
lived happily together. 

George Eliot tells us, " it is a deep mystery 
— ' the way the heart of man turns to one woman 
out of all the rest he's seen." It may be a 
deep mystery, but it would be a deeper one 
were it otherwise. 

XXI 

** Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of 

heaven. 
Blossomed the lovely stars, the ' forget-me-nots/ 

of the angels." Evangeline. 



116 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

This is the story of the " Forget-me-not." 
A lover and his lady walked one afternoon upon 
the bank of a swift and swollen stream, on the 
other side of which bloomed a beautiful flower, 
blue as the unclouded sky and delicate as the 
morning mist. The lady had never seen the 
little flower before, and greatly desired to have 
it. The wish was no sooner expressed than 
love prompted the youth to cross the raging 
torrent. This he did by means of a prostrate 
tree that spanned the wild waters. The ex- 
quisite flower was, with much peril, plucked 
from the overhanging cliffy, and with his treas- 
ure the lover turned to retrace his steps. But 
midway over the stream his foot slipped and 
he fell into the foaming current below. A few 
moments of desperate struggle with the hungry 
and engulfing waves made it clear that the 
shore could not be regained, and with the des- 
peration of love he made one final effort and 
cast at the feet of his lady the flowers all wet 
and bruised, crying, " Forget-me-not," and 
then sank beneath the water. Thus it was the 
German Vergiszmemnicht obtained its romantic 
name. 



IX 

MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 

The arts receive 

The natural man. 

And educate him step by step 

Unto the master-art. 

The art of life. 

HOSMER. 



MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 



Words suggest colors, and there are those 
who believe that they suggest also forms. One 
calls to mind the answer of the blind man, who, 
on being asked what idea he had of scarlet, re- 
plied that it was like the sound of a trumpet. 
The theory of sound as connected with musical 
instruments has been classified thus: 

WIND INSTRUMENTS 

TROMBONE .DEEP RED FliUTE SKY BLUE 

TRUMPET ...SCARLET DIAPASON .. DEEP BLUE 
CLARIONET . . . ORANGE DOUBLE DIAPASON . . . 

OBOE YELLOW PURPLE 

HORN VIOLET 

BASSOON (alto).... deep YELLOW 

STRINGED INSTRUMENTS 

VIOLIN PINK VIOLONCELLO .... RED 

VIOLA ROSE DOUBLE BASS .... DEEP 

CRIMSON RED 
• •••••• 

The effect of color upon the feelings when 
sounds harmonious to them are made is ex- 
119 



120 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

ceedingly interesting. The sound of the vil- 
lage clock at night-fall, the chirp of insects in 
early evening, the ripple of the mountain 
stream, and the wind in the darkness of night 
— all these gentle sounds suggest each its own 
color. The sound of the Falls of Niagara has 
been called " an appalling sound" — at night it 
suggests darkness more dense than that of mid- 
night. 

Poetry has a varied sound to the mental ear, 
and what that sound shall be is determined by 
surrounding scenery and circumstances. Think 
of the exquisite sweetness and tender emotion 
that gather about lines like these, sung in the 
evening twilight on the bosom of a lake, or on 
some overhanging cliff with a little village far 
in the distance, from which the evening bells 
sound faintly : 

" Those evening bells ! those evening bells ! 
How many a tale their music tells 
Of youth and home, and that sweet time 
When last I heard their soothing chime ! " 

II 

Music is the modern method of giving utter- 
ance to whatever is finest in feeling and in the 
emotions. It was through plastic art that the 
ancients voiced the deep experiences, the hopes, 
desires, and forebodings of the human heart. 



MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 121 

The mediaeval world made use of painting for 
the same end. Each art has its own peculiar 
excellence, but of them all music is certainly 
the finest, — the most ethereal and delicate. 



Ill 

Over the dead Raphael floated the Trans- 
figuration which the illustrious artist painted 
for the cathedral of Norbonne in France, and 
which is now preserved among the most sacred 
treasures of the Vatican. On Richter's coffin 
they placed a copy of one of his books. The 
great soldier must have his sword accompany 
him to the grave. A western vine-grower 
whose vineyards made purple all the hill-side 
had buried with him a bottle of his choicest 
wine. An aged violinist held in his unconscious 
grasp the musical instrument he loved so well. 
A clergyman had placed in his coffin a copy of 
the New Testament in which his mother had 
written her name when he was a child. In a 
grave near the city of Richmond there is de- 
posited a little tin bank filled with coins of 
small value that were collected and prized by a 
child. The mother placed the treasure there 
because in that grave she had herself deposited 
a much greater treasure. All the world knows 
how Dante Gabriel Rossetti buried in his wife's 
grave the manuscript of a volume of his un- 



122 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

published poems. In that volume were some 
of the poet's best verses. The treasure was 
recovered only after the pleading of some of 
his warmest friends. 

IV 

The cultivation of manners is self-culture at 
its best, for bearing, deportment, and even ap- 
pearance are a revelation of character. Great 
importance attaches to a soldier's physique. 
The step is scarcely less important than the 
manual of arms. The soldier's physical pres- 
ence determines in no small measure his moral 
structure and his worth as a fighter. Soldierly 
deportment will beget soldierly virtues. Man- 
ners give power to a superior mind. They 
equip the mind and insure it victory. Thus 
with weapons neither rude nor aggressive the 
field is won. 



Culture is essentially catholicity and 
breadth of sympathy. 

VI 

Culture is cosmopolitan. The man of af- 
fairs equally with the man of books may have 
this fine and noble quality, but no narrow sec- 
tarian or selfish partisan can lay just claim to 
its exquisite grace and beauty. 



MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 123 
VII 

The professions and the social circles must, 
well-nigh all of them, adopt defensive measures. 
Physicians have their code of medical ethics so 
framed as to exclude professional pretenders. 
Lawyers have rules and regulations with which 
they shut out from their legal associations 
wrongdoers. Authors protect themselves in 
the same way. Social circles give what is 
called "the cold shoulder"; and of all cold 
things, that kind of a shoulder is the coldest. 
The studied neglect of a beautiful lady, well 
painted, powdered, and be jeweled, is something 
to carry dismay to the stoutest heart. Women 
are more gifted than are men in the silent but 
remorseless warfare of snubs and contempt. 
Only those who have been wounded know how 
equally effective as a weapon is a woman's 
tongue. 

VIII 
I WEARY of hearing this perpetual discourse 
concerning the moral purpose of poetic art. 
The end and aim of all good verse is song. The 
composition need not be distinctively lyric, and 
yet songless verse, be it never so correct in 
measure and pleasing in structure, is not 
poetry. 



124 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
IX 

In the respect I show another I foster self- 
respect. Fine address is seldom far removed 
from fine feeling. Behavior is the sign we hang 
out to show others what may be expected of 
us. In what we do we reveal what we are. 
Social distinctions are not wholly arbitrary. 
The wall I construct around my field is ex- 
terior to that field, and is in no sense whatever 
a part of the field. But social barriers are a 
part of society itself, and for that reason so- 
ciety could not exist without them. The wall 
does not, as has been said, form any part of 
my field, nor is it necessary to the existence of 
that field. It only defines its boundary, and 
prevents strangers from intruding upon it. 
But the rules and regulations with which society 
surrounds itself not only prevent intrusion, but 
are themselves a part of the society they guard 
and protect. They are absolutely essential. 
There could be no society (at least no select 
society) without them. 



We must distinguish between culture and 
mere polish. The two are often confounded, 
the one with the other, and yet they are entirely 
different things. Polish is superficial; that is 
to say, it has to do with the surface only, while 



MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 125 

culture is a change in quality. The distinction 
is clear enough in matters connected with so- 
cial life. It requires more than a French fin- 
ishing school to make a lady, and more than 
a gold-rimmed eye-glass to make a gentleman. 
One is neither lady nor gentleman so long as 
the moral nature remains uncultivated. As 
well might an uncultivated patch of ground be 
taken for a garden. A gentleman is a gentle- 
man at heart or he is not one in any sense of 
the word. A true lady is gentle, modest, con- 
ciliatory, cordial, thoughtful of others, kind 
to her servants, and charitable in her judg- 
ments. But in all this there is something more 
than the developing of mere natural resources. 
Doubtless the possibilities of an oak are en- 
closed by the shell of the acorn, but light, air, 
and moisture have entered into the account. 
The light of sun and star, summer rain and 
winter frost, and all the juices of the earth are 
in that tree. A thousand outside influences 
unite with inward possibilities to make us what 
we are. 

XI 

Life is a series of disillusionments. First, 
the fairies die, then the wiser theories of early 
years, later the plans of a mature judgment, 
and last of all the radiant hopes and, some- 
times, the good resolves of those weary days in 



126 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

which we so commonly make a virtue of our 
unlovely necessities. But memory lives on 
with a sweet and gentle persistence. Out of 
the wreck of life she saves the most beauti- 
ful things, and youth fares best of all at her 
hands. 

XII 

When the evening lamps are lighted, the 
curtains drawn, and the warm glow of the 
hearth-fire invites the weary soul to withdraw 
itself for a time from the anxiety and discord 
of the outer world, there come to us from the 
open leaves of noble books, such as Charles 
Lamb used to kiss with the tenderness of a 
lover, the ones " whom to name were to praise." 
They throng around us, and in their delightful 
society we soon lose the burdens that have 
pressed heavily all the long day ; and out of a 
heart full to overflowing we exclaim with 
Fletcher : 

** That place that does 
Contain my books, the best companions, is 
To me a glorious court, where hourly I 
Converse with the old sages and philosophers." 

XIII 

God only can paint silence, darkness, and 
a star. 



MUSIC, ART, AND BEAUTY 127 
XIV 

The true gentleman fences himself about 
with propriety. He observes the fitness of 
things, and has great respect for established 
rules and for the customs that prevent en- 
croachment. To the rude and vulgar he seems 
encased by a thin sheet of ice. He will not be 
handled. 

XV 

Poetry introduces us to another world — a 
world of pure beauty. It is a world in which 
music is the one and only language. Reason 
and philosophy have no place there. Clamor- 
ous passions that concern themselves with com- 
mon wants and vulgar aims may not enter that 
enchanted realm where only the higher hopes 
and desires of the soul come and go in color 
and tone. It is a twilight world of cool eve- 
ning air and morning sunrise, with no torrid 
noon, full of toil and endeavor. Poetry means 
beauty, whether inward or external; for that 
it stands and for nothing more. Those who 
discourse of the supreme moral purpose of art 
know but little of the art of which they dis- 
course. 

To the man whose whole being is open to 
music of whatever kind, all things that have in 
them any beauty sing and dance ; and dancing 
is only the singing of the limbs and feet. The 



128 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

feet glance and twinkle like the sunbeam, float 
like the clouds, or storm like the wild elements 
in nature. Sun and rain, wind and wave, tree, 
flower, and grass add joj to the tenderness 
and pathos of the universal melody. All our 
expressions of beauty are symbolic. The 
dancing of Isadora Duncan, the creations of 
William Blake, and the dramatic representa- 
tions from classical, mediseval, and even, in 
some cases, modern times are symbols which, 
as we brood over them, produce within our 
minds the beauty for which they stand and 
which it is their nature to reproduce. Art 
means beauty, and of all arts poetry is the 
most enduring, the most ennobling, and the 
most exalted. 



X 

LITERATURE AND LITERARY FAME 

The ink of the scholar is more holy than the 
blood of the martyr. 

— Mohammed. 

Pen, wax, and parchment govern the world. 



LITERATURE AND LITERARY FAME 



Everything happens so quietly and gently 
in the old book-shop that you wonder if there 
is not something in the mere presence of books 
that men have overlooked. You somehow feel 
that what little is said betwen leaf and leaf is 
sacred. The Romans hung in the banqueting 
room directly over the table a beautiful rose 
to remind the guests that the conversation at 
the table must not be repeated on the morrow 
or at any other time, but must be sacredly pre- 
served as an inviolable secret. To every guest 
" sub rosa " meant concealment and silence. 
White was the color of the rose, because it was 
a white rose that CUpid dedicated to the god of 
silence. 

In the dear old book-shop you will see over 
the long rows of tempting volumes no white 
flower suggesting silence, but you will see what 
is just as good as, and to the book-lover much 
better than, the rose of silence : you will see the 
no less sacred and dust-white cobweb. In capa- 
cious wine-vaults the cobwebs gather over the 
131 



132 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

musty corks of old and well-seasoned bottles, 
and the critical judge will pick out no new 
vintage, but, stretching his arm and thrusting 
his hand into some dark corner, he will bring to 
view a mass of dust and cobwebs. He knows 
what he wants, and he wants the very best. 
In that mass of dust he holds the finest wine in 
the cellar. 

In McDonough's ^ shop you will do well to 
brush aside the dust, for under it all one may 
sometimes find the richest wine of letters. 
Take the sliding steps (you find such in every 
large book-shop) and mount to the top shelf. 
The best books are not supposed to be there, 
but one can never know just what he will find; 
no doubt you may come upon some vin or- 
dinaire or some new vintage, but you may find 
as well the very life-blood of the mellowest grape 
in all the vast vineyard of letters. 

The mellow grape of golden song, 

How rich the life-blood in its veins; 

Happy his hours, his life how long, 
Who the glad wine of letters drains. 



II 

The old books are often the best. They 
have endured the test of time. Thought and 

1 Joseph McDonough, known all over the United States 
and in England as " Ye Olde Booke Man." 



LITERATURE AND FAME 133 

study have enriched their pages. Comment 
and criticism have drawn to the surface all 
their deep meaning. Many new works that 
come before the reading world with great flour- 
ish of trumpets and blaze of glory shine only 
in light borrowed from more ancient luminaries. 
It is well for us to take Emerson's advice and 
" read no mean books. Good travellers stop 
at the best hotels ; ifhere is the best company 
and the best information. In like manner the 
scholar knows that the famed books contain, 
first and last, the best thoughts." 

Ill 
We owe much to books, and every year 
greatly increases the debt. They have pre- 
served to us the treasures of the past, and 
they constantly awaken within our bosoms as- 
pirations that quicken us to all that is noble 
in life. They are the best consolers of a 
wounded heart. To them we may go in the 
hour of sorrow and of misfortune, and find true 
and unwavering friendship. 

IV 

Petrarch, it is said, planted a bay-tree by 
the tomb of Virgil to replace one that was orig- 
inally there, but that perished when Dante died 
in 1290. It was at the tomb of Virgil that 
Boccaccio renounced the career of a merchant 



134 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

and dedicated his life to the cultivation of 
poetry and the study of literature. 

V 

An author's books, when once published, be- 
long to the world, but his private life remains 
his own. It does not follow that because a 
poet's work interests others, he must dress and 
undress in a crowded room after the fashion of 
old-time kings. 

VI 

We must cultivate a manly taste for whole- 
some food, in the mind as well as in the physical 
nature. The books which accomplish the most 
good and finally yield the greatest pleasure do 
not always at first furnish the most agreeable 
companionship. 

VII 

I ENVY not the man who loves not books. 
Books are friends to win our confidence and 
cheer our lonely hours. They are not things 
of commercial value only, nor are they treas- 
ures to hide away and hoard. They are friends 
and companions of the well-filled pipe, the mug 
of ale, and the rainy day. 

VIII 
Blessed is the man who lives in holy fellow- 
ship with great and noble books. His is a 



LITERATURE AND FAME 135 

world upon which no evil genius may breathe 
the blight of a selfish and unlovely spirit. An- 
gels wait upon him day and night. His soli- 
tude is peopled with heavenly companionship. 
The highest delight possible to man is his. 
Before him open the gates of Paradise. 

IX 

How strange a thing is fame. It has no 
visible presence, yet thousands woo it with all 
the passion of a lover, and are willing to die if 
only they may hear their names sounded from 
its lips of song and story. Verily men chase 
a phantom. Yet history were something quite 
unlike the record it now is had not the heart 
of humanity thrilled to the music of remem- 
brance. The grave is deep, but vast are the 
heavens to which we aspire, and glory crowns 
the dream of youth as well as the toil of mid- 
life and the serene wisdom of age. 

X 

How noble and yet how poor a thing is Fame. 
The ancients said much about its beauty and 
evanescence, and much also about its debasing 
influence over those who gave it the supreme 
place in their hearts. Marcus Aurelius ex- 
pressed in clear and graceful words the feeling 
of the best men and women of his day with re- 
gard to all earthly glory: 



136 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

MiKpOV Se KOL 7) fJLrjKLCTTr] V(XT€po4>r]IXLa, KOL aVTT] Brj 

Kara SLaSox^Jv avOpiOTrapcoiV rdxtcTTa TeOvrj^Ofxeviov, Kai 
ovK elSoTOiv ovSe €avTov<s ovre ye rbv irpoTraXai reOvrjKOTa. 
'AAAo, TO So^dptov ere irepiaTrdorei. 'AttiSoji/ ck to 
Tdxo<s Trj<; irdvTOiV XrjOri^ kol to ;;(aos tov i(f>* CKaTepa 
dirupov atwvo?, koX to kcvov Trj<s ctTrr/X'^o-ew?, Kal to 
ev/u,€Ta/?oAov kol aKpaTOV tojv d(f>* rjfuv 8okovvt(ov kol to 
a-Tcvov TOV TOTTOv Iv o) 7repLypd(f>eTaL. ^'OXrj re yap y yrj 
o-TtyfJir) KOL TavTrjs Troaov ywvtStov rj KaTOiKr]aL<s avTrj \ 
KOL IvTavOa irocTOi, kol Slol tivc? oi eTraivea-ofJievoL. 



XI 

Let me write over my library, " Mash 
Allah," — the Gift of God, — for I can say with 
St. Francis de Sales, " I have sought repose 
everywhere, and have found it only in a little 
corner with a little book." 

XII 

We are sometimes asked in a conspicuous ad- 
vertisement to purchase a certain book simply 
because it is not worth purchasing. The book 
is announced as the work of a peasant, a rustic, 
a workman, a man of no education, or a little 
child. We read that Anne Yearsley, the Bris- 
tol milkmaid, has appeared in print; that the 
Davidson sisters, both of them untrained chil- 
dren, have given the world what they and their 
publishers are pleased to call poems ; that a lit- 
tle girl, yet in her early teens and short frocks, 



LITERATURE AND FAME 137 

has blossomed into verse; or that a lad in the 
high school has published one of his composi- 
tions. Mrs. Hemans, when a child, published 
a book of verses having little beauty and no 
worth. I have in my library " Poems by 
Felicia Dorothea Browne " (Mrs. Hemans's 
maiden name), in the preface of which an in- 
dulgent public learns that " the following pieces 
are the genuine productions of a young lady 
between the ages of eight and thirteen years." 
The " pieces," as they are called, are trivial, 
commonplace, and jejune, and could never have 
seen the light but for the foolish generosity 
of the Right Honourable Viscountess Kirkwall. 
The authoress lived to become a distinguished 
poet, but she never reprinted a line of the book 
once so bravely exploited. I have in her auto- 
graph a letter addressed by her in mid-life to 
her publisher, rebuking him for seeking to re- 
print for mercenary ends those " pieces," re- 
gardless of her later judgment. 



XIII 

Keats, one of the most delightful of Eng- 
lish singers, the creator, as well as the wor- 
shipper, of beauty, whose verses have and will 
always have a marvellous charm hard to ex- 
plain, was afraid of the critic. There are 
those who say it was a reviewer and not con- 



138 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

sumption that slew him in the morning of his 
youth. Be that as it may, the fear was un- 
reasonable. Why should a poet like Keats 
dread the adverse judgment of any one? To 
speak the truth, no worthy writer need give 
himself any concern touching the opinion of 
his reviewers. The censor-in-letters has had 
his day and it has passed from him, never to re- 
turn. Men wonder at the appalling pronounce- 
ments of the great quarterlies of the last cen- 
tury, and even more do they wonder at the 
anxiety and vexation those pronouncements oc- 
casioned in the minds of sensitive poets and 
writers of good prose. 

That Keats took to heart the attacks 
("critiques," they were called!) of the quar- 
terly, Blackwood'' s, and more periodicals of the 
kind is not so strange as one living under the 
altered conditions of the present day might 
think. The reviewer was then in his saddle, 
and his tinsel and frippery made a great show. 
No one had yet found him out. The personal 
abuse which " old man " Gifford heaped upon 
the dazed and demoralized English poet was 
supposed to be criticism, and the publisher of 
" Endymion " was as badly scared by the said 
GifFord's tumult and uproar as was the timid 
author himself. In the Southern States in 
America an eclipse of the sun (one of the moon 
would do as well) never failed of sending re- 



LITERATURE AND FAME 189 

cently emancipated slaves scurrying to the 
woods for safety. GifFord's hurriedly-gotten- 
up eclipse of common sense, with the accom- 
paniment of no small amount of stage thunder 
and lightning, had a like effect upon the still 
unemancipated Mr. Taylor and the sensitive 
and gifted maker of " Endymion." All persons 
anywise connected with the perpetration of that 
poem made something more than " schedule 
time " in their retreat to the woods, with the 
irascible Mr. William Gilford in hot pursuit. 

Keats was easily frightened. A reviewer's 
" Boo ! " caused him to tremble from head to 
foot. When the critic attacked Byron he got 
pay in his own coin, though, to tell the truth, 
the young lord's immature verses were a fair 
mark for vitriol-tipped arrows of every kind. 

The day of the censorial " Boo ! " has, as 
we have said, passed away forever. Every man 
is now at liberty to express his opinion, and 
few care very much what any man's opinion 
may be. This is an age of " Go as you like, 
and do as you please ! " — an age in nowise 
favorable to great achievements in arts or let- 
ters. But all the lawlessness and vulgarity of 
to-day may be justly laid at the feet of the 
Giffords and men of the kind who thrived in 
fustian a century or more ago. Once in a 
while a paper like the Nation or The Evening 
Post will utter an ineffectual little squeal, and 



140 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

cr}^ " Boo ! " but no one thinks of scurrying to 
the woods. 

Some time ago the former of the papers 
named, having come upon a very respectable 
book of which it apparently knew about as 
much as GifFord knew of the very much greater 
" Endymion," noticed the said work doubtless 
in a way quite satisfactory to that paper's 
editor. Its reviewer, or penny-a-liner ("a 
rose by any other name would smell as sweet "), 
called the following section of a paragraph in 
praise of marriage " a little indecent " : " Re- 
splendent with the golden light of the City not 
builded with hands, it wears upon its brow the 
ineffable smile of its Creator." There is no ac- 
counting for taste nor yet for the want of it, 
but the above book-notice helps us to under- 
stand why so few in this age share with Keats 
his distressing awe of the professional critic. 
Let us hope the " critic " in this case had been 
out the night before and had not yet recovered 
from his mild hilarities. We will not believe 
the august and venerable critic of the 'Na- 
tion seriously thinks (that is to say, after he 
has rested) the line he cited and which we have 
reproduced in any degree '' indecent." 

Once such a pronouncement as we have 
quoted from the Nation would have affected 
an author beyond present belief. But, as has 
been said, no one is frightened now, nor is any 



LITERATURE AND FAME 141 

one greatly interested in the fulminations of 
belated critics who, having survived their fel- 
lows, are still able to make sundry mirth-pro- 
voking thrusts with a more or less noisy pen. 

XIV 

Alexander Dumas was a dreamer — not in 
any ideal sense, or after any poetic fashion; 
he was a realistic dreamer. His books are 
romances, and so fanciful that to finish reading 
one of them is like wakening from a dream — 
a dream, not of heaven or of purgatory, but 
of earth. The men and women of his dreams 
are neither angels nor phantoms : they are real 
flesh and blood. They are as human as ever: 
they sin with the same daintiness, and are virtu- 
ous with the same carelessness, and live, love, 
and die with the same shallow brilliance that 
men and women exhibit every day in the streets 
of Paris. 

XV 

To New England belongs the honor of hav- 
ing given to the world a collection of literary 
men unequalled for social purity and upright- 
ness by any or all of the great intellectual cir- 
cles of this or any other age. Channing, 
Everett, Emerson, Longfellow, Hale, Haw- 
thorne, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, Fields, 



142 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Thoreau, and Aldrich, are names unclouded by 
even a faint suspicion of anything unworthy of 
a pure and noble manhood. 

XVI 

The critic was once of service to the world 
of letters and arts, but his day is now ended 
and he has become a nuisance. We can get on 
without him. The reviews and critiques of the 
present time are little more than expressions of 
personal likes and dislikes. 



XI 

OLD AGE AND DEATH 

Brutes die but once; 
Blest, incommunicable privilege for which 
Proud man, who rules the globe and reads the stars, 
Philosopher or hero — sighs in vain. 

The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have 
forgotten the names of their founders. 

— Thomas Fuller. 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 



At Windsor, in the merry land of England, 
where linger still those simple manners that 
keep us young long after the years have sil- 
vered the hair and furrowed the brow, there 
died in 1832 Thomas Pope, a shepherd who, 
like the Good Shepherd of whom we read in the 
Sacred Book, " loved the sheep." He had seen 
the flowers of ninety-six summers bloom and 
fade in the dooryard that had been the delight 
of his early days, and in which he sat through 
many a twilight hour of the long evening of his 
well-spent life. 

He commenced tending sheep when as a lad 
he received but two pence per day, and nothing 
could induce him to change his occupation. 
His humble station in life was lifted above the 
rudeness and vulgarity that so easily attach 
themselves to its seemingly trivial duties by the 
artless sincerity and sweet purity of the man. 
He was every day alone with the sheep many 
hours, and, wanting human companionship, he 
would seat himself upon a moss-grown boulder 
145 



146 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

under a spreading elm where he could see the 
creatures of his charge and watch with curious 
attention their way of living. He came after 
a time to love the sheep, and he thought them 
better company than the men and women with 
whom he conversed at the village inn and with 
whom he worshipped in the old stone church, 
where for many generations his lowly ancestors 
had lifted their untutored hearts to Heaven. 

At last the old man came to die, and when the 
doctor could do no more they sent for the 
preacher. " Old Thomas, the Shepherd," for 
so they called him for miles and miles around, 
listened to the reading of the prayers for the 
sick, and added his own quiet and reverent 
Amen. Then he said it was his particular wish 
that his crook and bell might be buried with 
him — the crook in one hand and the bell in the 
other. 

Early in the morning the sun looked in at the 
window of the low-thatched cottage, but the 
shepherd saw it not, for he had gone far away 
to abide with the countless dead that, if they 
be not great or wise, we soon forget. A crowd 
of rustic folk from far and near, and with them 
the lord of the Manor, followed the shepherd to 
his lowly grave. In the deal coffin that the vil- 
lage carpenter made were the crook and bell 
from which old Thomas would not be parted. 
With the funeral procession came also the 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 147 

meek-eyed sheep that had for so long a time 
followed their kindly caretaker; and their 
bleating mingled not irreverently with the sol- 
emn words of prayer. 

The minister read the Twenty-third Psalm, 
in which the Lord is represented as the Shep- 
herd of his people; and then they covered the 
old man with turf, and left him under the flow- 
ers and the trees that were so soon to drink 
up the juices of his body, changing them into 
the beauty of the rose and the grateful refresh- 
ment of shade under boughs of oak and elm. 
More than seventy years the old man has 
rested in the grave they gave him that Autumn 
day, and now, after so long a time, by mere 
chance, I have come upon the story of his ob- 
scure life and well-rendered service. 

II 

The man who strives to forget Death only 
thinks of it the more. There is for all of us 
but one way of escape from its impending 
shadow, and that we find in strong and noble 
living. 

Ill 

A man's dread of death and a child's fear of 
darkness are the same thing. In both cases, 
Imagination is the terror-worker, and in both 
cases the remedy is Light. 



148 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 
IV 

The earth we tread is a vast cemetery. The 
stones under our feet are all written over with 
histories and marvellous tales of the dead — 
histories and tales no eye will ever read, and to 
which no ear will listen. It has been estimated 
by scientists that on each square rod of our 
earth something like 1280 human beings lie 
buried, each rod being scarcely sufficient for 
ten graves, with each grave containing 128 
persons. The entire surface of our globe, then, 
has been dug up 128 times to bury its dead. 
The dead are everything, they are everywhere, 
— under our feet, over our heads, and on every 
side. They are in the solid earth on which we 
stand, the unfathomed oceans that surround 
our continents, and through the spaces of the 
air they ride on every wind. Not formless 
phantoms wrought from the texture of a dream 
are the unnumbered hosts that come and go 
through all the crowded thoroughfares of life; 
they are real and tangible in the perfume of the 
rose and the whiteness of the untrodden snow, 
the motion of the wave and the hardness of the 
rock, the richness of the harvest and the prime- 
val grandeur of the forest. 

V 

There is a certain companionship in sound. 
The man who pokes fun at death whistles to 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 149 

keep his courage up. Passing a graveyard 
after dark, he thinks to scare the spectres of 
which he is afraid, by making a noise. The 
sound of one's own voice inspires courage even 
when nothing is said worth the saying. 

VI 

Man in a savage state has little fear of death. 
He fears sorcery and diabolism for the reason 
that these have power, in his opinion, so to in- 
fluence his life on earth as to make it both brief 
and unfortunate. Only when the unknown 
seizes upon the imagination and demands an 
explanation, because the brain of man has in 
the process of development reached a larger 
growth, does the fear of death become oppres- 
sive. The fear is largely selfish, and from it 
escape is possible through either religious or 
altruistic channels : the former lead to an al- 
liance with what we dread, and the latter con- 
duct the mind away from the thought of self. 

VII 

There are many instances of thoughtful- 
ness with regard to man's last resting-place 
in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. 
Very beautiful are the lines of Leonidas in 
which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead 
the sheep may bleat above him, and the shep- 



150 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

herds pipe from the rock as they gaze in quiet 
gladness along the valley, and the countryman 
in spring pluck a meadow flower and lay it on 
his grave. There is a lovely Greek poem that 
bids the mountain-brooks and cool upland pas- 
tures tell the bees, when they go forth anew on 
their flowery way, that their old keeper fell 
asleep on a Winter night and will not come back 
with Spring. A Greek epitaph invites the way- 
farer to " sit beneath the poplars when weary, 
and draw water from the spring; and ever re- 
member the fountain was made by Simus as a 
memorial of his dead child." Another Greek 
epitaph reads : " Dear Earth, take old Amyn- 
tichus to thy bosom, remembering his many 
labors on thee; for ever he planted in thee the 
olive-stock, and often made thee fair with vine- 
cuttings, and filled thee with herbs and plente- 
ous fruits : do thou in return lie softly over his 
grey temples and flower into tresses of Spring- 
herbage." How delightful the prayer of an 
old Greek : " May flowers grow thick on thy 
newly-built tomb, not the dry bramble, nor the 
evil weed, but violets and marjoram and wet 
narcissus. Around thee may all be roses." 

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits derived 
from the thought of our common mortality is 
the liberation from fear which it confers upon 
minds that have long felt the oppressive weight 
of dark and distressing apprehension. Hun- 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 151 

dreds and thousands of our race are rendered 
miserable all their days by the lonely shadow 
of death. The Anglo-Saxon especially, who 
views the world through serious eyes and is 
never long separated from his conscience, is a 
victim of the tormenting dread of dissolution. 
This distressing alarm, which has in so many 
cases deprived life of all its sweetness, may be 
overcome and even entirely dispelled by a calm 
and reasonable consideration of death. It has 
seemed to many thoughtful persons that Walt 
Whitman accomplished for himself and his 
readers something of the kind in that wonder- 
ful invocation to Death which John Burroughs 
pointed out as the climax of the superb poem 
written to commemorate the death of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, " When Lilacs Last in the Door- 
Yard Bloom'd." 

VIII 

The tomb of Bunyan is surrounded by the 
hallowed graves of more than three hundred 
Noncomformist ministers, most of whom were 
ejected from their churches for no other crime 
than that of obedience to enlightened conscience 
and the exercise of manly courage. They were 
men of splendid proportion ; dauntless in spirit 
as they were spotless in life ; and wherever Eng- 
lish language and history shall be known, the 
calm and religious trust with which they en- 



152 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

dured the hatred of their foes, and the courage 
with which they took the spoiling of their goods, 
must excite the warmest admiration. They 
loved, as only heroic souls can love, the grand 
old prisoner of Bedford jail, and it was the last 
request of many of them : " Bury me in the 
Bonehill Fields, and let my coffin be as near as 
possible to that of the author of Pilgrim* s 
Progress," There they all rest to-day in what 
was once derisively called " the fanatical burial- 
place," and over well-nigh every grave might be 
written the beautiful word Peace, " They 
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; 
neither shall the sun light on them, nor any 
heat." The trial of their faith is ended, and 
" the fanatical burial-place " is consecrated 
ground indeed. 

IX 

Stand of a Sunday morning in any cathe- 
dral, and you may hear the dead sing and 
preach; you may hear them avow their faith. 
The wax-tapers that burn upon the altar were 
lighted centuries ago by priests and acolytes 
who put aside their white surplices and fell 
asleep when the great city was young. Unseen 
hands swing the glittering censer, and they will 
still swing it, filling the air with clouds of in- 
cense, when other centuries have gone by. How 
very old is the service ! It will continue, it may 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 153 

be, so long as man continues to dwell upon the 
earth, and in it the living and the dead are one. 
We are ruled by the dead. From their urns 
they lay hold of us, and whither they will they 
turn us. 



None are so old as they who have outlived 
enthusiasm. 

XI 

Of the tomb of Achilles Plutarch has this to 
say : " Alexander passed the Hellespont and 
came to Troy, where he sacrificed to Pallas and 
made a libation to the heroes ; he also poured 
oil upon the tomb of Achilles, and, according 
to the accustomed manner, he with his friends 
ran about it naked and placed a crown upon 
it, pronouncing of Achilles that he was a most 
happy and fortunate person; for that while he 
lived he had so good a friend as Patroclus, and 
when dead, that he had so famous a publisher 
as Homer." He was even more fortunate, for 
after a life of hardship and adventure it was 
his privilege to die for the beautiful Polyxena, 
daughter of Priam, for whose sake he went un- 
armed to the temple of Apollo, where Paris slew 
him. And so alike in life and death he was a 
hero, celebrated in lofty song and in the noblest 
story. 



154. THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
XII 

The lovely poem of Ruth, written in the very 
dawn of history, discloses to us the deep and 
abiding secret of human affection in the never- 
to-be-forgotten words of the Moabitish woman : 
" Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return 
from following after thee: for whither thou 
goest I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will 
lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy 
God my God: where thou diest will I die, and 
there will I be buried." When we would ex- 
press our most ardent love for the land we call 
our own, we describe that land as the " burial- 
place of our fathers." Sir Walter Scott has- 
tened home with anxious heart, for he would 
not die in a strange land and leave his bones to 
crumble in foreign earth. Washington Irving 
took great pleasure in his quiet and retired 
life on the banks of the Hudson, and he desired 
above all things that when death should have 
robbed him of his queer old seventeenth century 
mansion and of the beauty of river and land- 
scape, his dust might mingle with that of his 
kindred in Sleepy Hollow, near the little church 
in which the credulous schoolmaster, Ichabod 
Crane, led the choir. 

XIII 
Habit is the old man's delight. 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 155 

XIV 

There is a certain ease and mellowness of 
companionship in riper years. The horizon is 
broader, the sympathies are more general, and 
the feeling and purpose of the man more catho- 
lic. Anxiety for victory has given place to re- 
gard for truth. A distinguished writer has 
said that no one can understand Shakespeare 
before the age of forty has been reached. Up 
to that time it is quite possible to admire the 
dramatist, but no one under forty can compre- 
hend his meaning or enter into his spirit. I 
verily believe there are some things not in litera- 
ture alone or in philosophy, but in life and the 
spiritual domain that can never be learned from 
books and colleges, and that only the years can 
impart to the willing mind. 

The approach of age should always bring 
with it moral rest, which is only another name 
for peace. Positive happiness is not absolutely 
essential; a man may forego this, and yet lead 
a strong, noble, and beautiful life. Some of 
the best characters in history have known much 
of sorrow, and have been themselves ripened 
into what they were by that very sorrow. I 
suppose it is the increasing desire and need for 
rest of both body and mind, and for peace of 
heart which should come with the years, that 
makes Wordsworth, so little cared for by the 



156 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

young, a favorite poet with elderly persons, and 
especially with the contemplative. 



XV 

Much of the loneliness of age is occasioned 
by the death of early friends and companions. 
The man who survives these in a certain sense 
survives himself. New friends are not easily 
made after one has reached the age of fifty. 
And with the loneliness of declining years there 
comes a consciousness of the approach of a lone- 
liness even deeper than any of which we have 
made mention — : the loneliness of death. 

** A lonely hour is on its way to each, 
To all; for death knows no companionship." 

All the supreme places and conditions of life 
are lonely. Thousands of men may die in bat- 
tle within a very circumscribed area and at the 
same time, yet to each man death comes as a 
solitary event. Our associations are superfi- 
cial when compared with our isolations. Since, 
then, we cannot escape the great solitudes of 
our existence, is it not well that we give some 
time to their consideration? We may, if we 
will, look Destiny in the face, and thus acquaint 
ourselves in advance with the " lonely hour," 
and we may thus in some measure disarm it of 
its terrors. Every man should learn to be 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 157 

alone without discomfort to himself. Gibbon 
wrote, " On the approach of spring I withdraw 
without reluctance from the noisy and extensive 
scene of crowds without company and dissipa- 
tion without pleasure." We need not tarry 
for the spring. Each day brings with it its 
own opportunity. 

XVI 

Many a man once envied for his wealth and 
world-wide renown, having played his part upon 
the stage of life, is no longer remembered; but 
how well preserved, like the fly in amber, are 
many names of once lowly minstrels because 
long years ago a few simple lines touched the 
popular heart. 

XVII 

Prince and peasant are equally mortal. 
The vast army that marches oblivionward with- 
out halting day or night is not composed of the 
poor and illiterate alone. In its ranks are 
lords and ladies and proud bishops of half a 
dozen religious denominations. Not one per- 
son in a hundred thousand will be heard of fifty 
years hence. Not more than one in five hun- 
dred thousand will ever be called to mind at the 
end of another century. Darkness and oblivion 
with open arms wait to enfold our race. And 
yet, such is the irony of fate, in the midst of all 



158 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

this forgetfulness, here and there some man by 
mere accident impresses a wholly inconsequent 
name upon the enduring history of our world, 
or enshrines it in the imperishable literature of 
mankind. 

XVIII 

Men are unwilling to relax their hold upon 
the activities of this world even in the grave. 
If they cannot live themselves, they insist that 
their names and influence shall continue. They 
name cities and streets after themselves. They 
write books and paint pictures for posterity. 
Thousands of men subsist upon the post mor- 
tem ambitions and desires of their fellow men. 
Colleges are endowed and professorships are 
named by men who cling to the hope of im- 
mortality. Take from the human mind dread 
of oblivion, and there would be comparatively 
few cadets at West Point. Whoever in the 
years to come shall succeed in rendering the 
world indifferent to the future, will have it in 
his power to pauperize Oxford, Cambridge, 
Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities. 
Centuries ago Horace boasted that he had 
builded in his deathless poems " a monument 
more enduring than brass " ; and to-day thou- 
sands of scribblers for magazines and papers 
cherish the same ambition and indulge the same 
dream. 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 159 

XIX 

" To see a world in a grain of sand. 
And a heaven in a wild flower; 
Hold infinity in the palm of his hand, 
And eternity in an hour." 

Many a sorrowful heart has found eternity 
in less than an hour. The criminal awaiting 
execution lives through vast ages in a single 
second. A sailor, escaped from the perils of 
shipwreck, described his twenty-four hours 
upon a floating spar as longer than all the years 
of his life. As the infant, opening its eyes in 
mingled wonder, fear, and delight to the chang- 
ing scenes of this busy world, has no idea of 
either time or space, but reaches out its little 
hands to grasp the distant moon, and is im- 
patient of every delay in the gratification of its 
fancies, so. the dying who have long measured 
hours, not by " figures on a dial," but by heart- 
throbs and tear-drops, sometimes lose all sense 
of time just before they pass from it into eter- 
nity. 

Time is but another name for those little di- 
visions we make in eternity, and eternity is the 
measureless expanse of God's infinite existence. 
The little hours, days, weeks, months, years, 
centuries, and millenniums are but faint shad- 
ows upon the glowing disc of His vast duration. 
Before the day arrives it has no existence as 



160 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

such, and when it is over no trace of its exist- 
ence may be discovered. Thus are all our 
marks upon the sand washed out by the tides 
of that sea no man may compass. To one who 
has been dead a day it is practically the same, 
so far as this earth is concerned, as if he had 
been in the grave a hundred thousand centuries. 
Thus it is that the shallowest grave is bottom- 
less ; and yet into a grave so deep the human 
soul looks with unshaken confidence, and dares 
to exclaim, " This corruptible must put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal must put on im- 
mortality." 

XX 

An Old Testament prophet tells us that " we 
do all fade as a leaf." I rejoice that we thus 
fade, for what in this wide world fades more 
gradually, gracefully, and beautifully than a 
leaf. And it fades in companionship with 
countless millions of other leaves. Decked in 
gold and crimson, it lies down upon the soft 
wings of the wind, and is borne with pomp and 
music to its place of rest. 

How gradually and gracefully the leaf fades ! 
First the faintest tinge of yellow or the mere 
suggestion of solferino ; then a delicate pink 
along the central veins, and before one can re- 
alize the wonderful change that is taking place 
over hill and valley, lo 1 the brilliant green is 



OLD AGE AND DEATH 161 

all gone, and not a vestige of summer remains. 

It is so with us. The first grey hair hardly 
attracts attention; we may not notice it at all. 
We are not sure when it is that the first wrinkle 
comes to view. The step has lost its vigor and 
elasticity, but we did not realize at the time, 
nor can we quite realize, now, that these changes 
have actually taken place. It had never oc- 
curred to me that I was no longer young until 
one day a man said to me, " You look to be 
as young as a boy." Then it was I first knew 
I was showing some signs of age. But for 
those signs, he would not have remarked upon 
my youthful appearance. 

The old man resents allusion to his age. He 
did not see the golden-rod that grew along the 
roadside of his life, nor did he see the chang- 
ing leaves. The first snow-flake has fallen, 
and yet he is just preparing to live, and is 
making plans far into the future. He will not 
believe what his own eyes tell him, nor will he 
hear the lonely song of the autumn wind, so 
gradually have the years changed him. 



XII 
MISCELLANY 

Chips of learning show the nature of the tree. 

CiREDERF NiVRAM. 



MISCELLANY 



A GENTLEMEN is such at heart or he is no 
gentleman at all. A woman may have every 
grace and refinement, may be able to enter and 
leave a room with faultless ease and dignity, 
may have a delicate acquaintance with all the 
niceties of the French language, may be able to 
say pleasing things in a captivating way, may 
be well qualified to shine in gay society, and yet 
be no lady in the true sense of that word. It 
requires more than mere polish to make either 
gentleman or lady. One might have rough 
hands, hardened by honest toil, a spinal column 
bent double from long familiarity with drudg- 
ery, an awkward shyness and a good-natured 
yet distressing bluntness — might have all 
these, and yet merit the name of gentleman or 
lady. It was of our blessed Lord and Saviour 
that the quaint old Thomas Dekker wrote these 
lines : 

" The best of men 

That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; 

A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit. 

The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 

165 



166 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
II 

As the bee distilleth the sweetest honey from 
wild flowers along the roadside and in mead- 
ows, so doth the soul, in harmony with God and 
nature and at peace with itself, extract from 
the common experiences and trivial duties of 
ordinary life the most wholesome and lasting 
happiness. 

Dost thou love beauty ? God hath given thee 
birth in a picture gallery more wonderful than 
Louvre or Vatican. Hath heaven attuned 
thine ear to music .^ Harken to the clear, 
sweet notes of the bird-song in the tree-tops, 
the drowsy and delicious chirp of countless in- 
sects at nightfall, the murmur of the mountain- 
brook, the soft sighing of the wind in the leafy 
retreats of the forest, and the indescribably 
melodious voices of strong men, beautiful 
women, and lovely children all around thee. 
Hath the Creator given thee thirst for knowl- 
edge.? Nature is an open book, and Pierian 
springs gush forth on every side. Dost thou 
hunger for spiritual truth? O child of God, 
behold the light of truth in the pure life and 
spotless character of Christ, and gloriously re- 
flected in the humbler lives of his disciples. 

Ill 

Ever since a friend read to me RuflSni's ex- 
quisite story, " Doctor Antonio," these strong 



MISCELLANY 167 

and pathetic lines have haunted my memory: 
" She lay with her head turned toward the 
castle. Her last look had been for Antonio. 
Doctor Antonio still suffers, prays, and hopes 
for his country." I think the profound melan- 
choly in which the book ends might be lightened 
by an appendix informing the disconsolate 
reader that the noble patriot, who was no one 
but Giovanni Ruffini himself, lived to see Italy 
free, and, after twenty years of exile, returned 
to Taggia and died in 1881, surrounded by the 
" orange trees and evergreen myrtle which fill 
the air with sweet perfumes and make perpetual 
spring." Ruffini wrote out of a full heart, and 
with the one purpose of interesting the world 
in the sorrows of his native land. He wrote 
in pure and elegant English, and in a style 
both forcible and delicate. He was poet, 
scholar, artist, patriot, and soldier, all in one; 
and to his glowing and inspired pen San Remo, 
Taggia, and Bordlghera owe that air of ro- 
mance which has rendered their lovely scenery 
even more attractive. 



IV 

He was doubtless an honest alderman, but 
he was not quite up to Chesterfield's ideal of a 
fine gentleman, who, delighted by the appetite 
of Prince William of Gloucester at a public 



168 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

banquet, cried out, " Eat away, your royal 
highness ; there's a plenty more in the kitchen." 
But men and things are good or bad, fine or 
coarse, by comparison ; and it seems to us that 
the Liverpool alderman was even squeamishly 
delicate in his choice of phrases, when we find 
one western governor telling the United States 
authorities to " shut up," and another reply- 
ing to his critics after the following fashion: 
" Let them pitch in and give me the devil if 
they want to. They could not cut through my 
hide in three weeks with an axe." A little of 
the politeness and courtesy of older nations 
might not hurt the robust constitution of our 
American Republic. 

V 

The French love soldiers ; the English toler- 
ate them ; the Americans will have nothing to 
do with them. 

VI 

Who plucks a whale will gather no feathers. 



POEMS 



Nothing is poetry that does not transport; the 
lyre is in a certain sense a winged instrument. 

JOUBERT. 



I 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



ETHER 

Pure air the soul demands, 

And cloudless light : 

Who to himself can say 

Bravely, " Thou must ! " 

Austere compulsion turns 

To sweet delight; 

He breathes the mountain air 

Of duty loved. 

Nobly obeyed. 

O'er all the crystal sphere. 

Radiant above him springs 

From the rude earth below, 

Heaven's dome of blue. 



ONLY A WORD 

Only a flower that grew awhile 

By the dusty roadside there; 
One thing, 'mid grime, and heat, and weeds, 

Fragrant, and fresh, and fair. 

One word, in all the fierce debate. 

Tender, and kind, and true; 
Dear word, my life is better now. 

And sweeter far for you. 
173 



174 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 



TRUE GENEROSITY 

He only is generous 

Whose gift, 
By a willing hand proffered, 

Is swift. 



« THOU KNOWEST " 

*Neath Montparnasse's sacred shade I stand, 
And greet whom I have known before, 
But not, as in the days of yore, 

With song and laughter and the voice of praise. 
Alas, the bounding pulse and flashing eyes. 
And motion eloquent of swift surprise. 
Are dust beneath the flowers to-day ! 

I turn to read — the name and little else ! 
What could the lifeless marble say 
For one who cast herself away? 
" Thou knowest." 



SHELLEY 

The sorrows of the world to music sweet 

Our English Ariel set ; 
And in his perfect verse the tenderest love 

With deathless daring met. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 175 



THE RULE OF LIFE 

With Reason dwell in ever sweet delight, — 

A noble purpose in thy daily life 
To which, as turns the needle to the pole, 
Thou mov'st with neither haste nor eager 
strife. 
Seek not unfathomed mysteries to view. 

Nor let brief trifles stir thine inner mind ; 
Desire not boundless wealth, nor knowledge 
vast; 
Be not self-centred — to thy neighbor blind ; 
Waste no regret on what thou canst not change ; 

Let common joys supply a sane delight. 
Thus live, and peace shall be thy changeless 
friend ; 
Gladness shall fill thy day, and sleep thy 
night. 



MARCUS AURELIUS AND EPICTETUS 

Twin stars, serene and pure, 
In the fear-haunted gloom 
Of the wild pagan night, — 
So long, so long ago ! 
In royal purple one. 
Philosopher and saint. 



176 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

With words divinely wise; 

The other but a slave, 

Yet monarch still who ruled 

The godlike minds of men. 

Alone, undimmed, they burned 

Above a world of doom 

Until the morning-red 

Flamed crimson in the east, 

And the ascending dawn 

Of an immortal Christ 

Filled the blue heavens with light. 

SOMEWHERE 

SoMEWHEUE a place is waiting — 
Has waited long for me ; 

I cannot tell if on the land. 
Or in the deep blue sea. 

It may be on the mountain top. 
By wandering breezes fanned; 

Or in some lonely valley, 
In a forsaken land. 

But whether it be on the land. 
Or 'neath the boundless sea. 

It is the place that Nature holds 
Close to her heart for me. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 177 



THE POET TO HIS LADY 

Like bird that circles in its flight 

High o'er the cruel huntsman's head, 

So I, alarmed, my safety seek, 

Lest thy sweet glance should strike me dead. 

So eager leap the glowing flames 
Of love, I dare not meet thy gaze. 

Lest courage rash should cost at once 
My failing life and thy dear praise. 

Yet than the morning fairer far. 
Dear lady, thou most surely art ; 

I'll bid farewell to doubting fear. 
And dwell forever in thy heart. 



KINDNESS 

Whose eye with melting pity flows, 
His life is like a summer rose; 
But he whose ready hands are kind, 
A father's heart in God shall find; 
For better 'tis to love than weep, 
And better far to work than sleep. 
For human kindness is divine, 
And what thou givest shall be thine. 



178 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



SWEET COMPANY 

Death is lonely — always so ; 
Unattended, man must go. 
Said the sage of long ago: 
" Wisdom 'tis one's self to know." 
Wiser wisdom 'tis to be 
To thyself sweet company. 
Therefore learn, dear heart, to be 
To thyself sweet company. 



A WAYSIDE FLOWER 

A LITTLE flower, it bloomed and died 
Unseen, the dusty road beside; 
Its beauty vanished into air; 
Such flowers grow always everywhere, 
Too common for a thought or care. 

Yet while it lived 'twas fair to see, — 
As fair as prouder flower might be; 
To one brief hour it gave new grace, 
Adorned, unprized, its humble place. 

What more, dear friend, can you or I, 
With richer earth and bluer sky. 
Than just some lowly grace supply 
For careless feet that pass us by.? 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 179 



SIGH NOT A VANISHED PAST " 

Why chase the flying dream 

Of wealth and fame? 
For us the marble waits ; — 

A date — a name. 



The grass is green to-day, 
The heavens are blue ; 

The summer heart holds now 
Love sweet and true. 



Fill the swift hour with glad, 
Kind deeds and words, 

The fragrance of the flowers, 
The song of birds. 



Sigh not a vanished past, 

A fading year ; 
Enrich the passing hour, 

And banish fear. 



So shall the world grow young, 

And envy die; 
Peace from the heavens descend, 

And God draw nigh. 



180 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 

AGE 

''HBrj yap 6 Bios ov/xos tairipav ayei. 

When life grows cold 

And we are old, 

The fire burns low, 

And winter's snow 

Falls through twilight air, 

And everywhere 

Is stillness and regret; 

And we forget 

All save the early day 

So far away ; 

When life is lonely. 

And we only 

Have ceaseless quest — 

Seeking for rest 

That lingers on the way, 

As loth to stay 

With dull and frosty age — * 

Who shall our grief assuage, 

The weak regret and dole 

Of a poor trembling soul 

With healing words console? 

Friend of the early day. 

If still there stay 

With us Thy presence dear, 

Nor grief, nor fear. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 181 

Nor sins that we deplore, 

Can wound us sore. 

There never can be grief, 

But Thy relief 

Shall fall like summer rain 

That brings again 

The glad, sweet flowers of spring. 

And so at last, 

Our work well done. 

Unmoved we'll view 

The swift descending sun 

Go down for aye. 

And one by one the twinkling stars 

Light up the sky. 



BRAHMA'S CUP 

I LIFT the cup of Brahma high ! — 
The cup and liquor both are his; 

That flowing draught is perfect rest, 
For Brahma's self the liquor is. 

Let endless kalpas still revolve, 

Who quafFs, no grief shall e'er befall ; 

For he shall dream the dream of God, 
And never know he dreams at all. 



182 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 



My transmigrating days are o'er; 

God's hand presents the sacred cup; 
I eager grasp the chalice now, 

And drink the Godhead's liquor up. 

And while the sacred wine I quaff, 
Two souls are mingled on the brim; 

I drink ol Brahma in the cup. 
And he receives me into him. 



FROM « BERKLEY CHURCHYARD 

How still are all the dead, 
Each in his narrow bed ; 
None anxious vigil keep, 
But all are fast asleep; 
On every brow is rest; 
Peace dwells in every breast. 
It is a great relief 
To know that neither grief, 
Nor any sad distress. 
Nor doubt, nor weariness. 
Their slumber shall disturb. 



Life hath its joy for all 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 183 

The vine on yonder wall, 
Where spotted lizards crawl, 
And the glad robins call 
Gajly their feathered young, 
Has, all unnoticed, sprung 
From the dark earth below. 
The winter's frost and snow 
Gave it new strength to grow. 
Out of our griefs arise 
The things that most we prize. 
Life is too brief for tears. 
Too soon it disappears; 
Nor should our foolish fears 
Make sad the flying years. 
From these let us arise 
To greet the morning skies, 
To welcome the bright noon, 
Or watch the silver moon 
Flood with its mellow light 
The erstwhile lonely night, — 
Lonely no more since we 
In earth and air and sea 
May use and beauty find. 
We may not leave behind 
Our grief, and yet behold! 
From it there may unfold. 
As from the bud a flower. 
Some rich and golden hour. 



184 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



HERE AND NOW 

"What is a ghost?" inquired a little child: 
I gently pressed its trembling hand, 
And softly whispered, " You behold a ghost, 
And this bright world is spirit land." 



DRIFTWOOD 

Upon my hearth the driftwood burns, 
Rude waves have brought me from afar: 

Across the sea my children went, — 
To-night I wonder where they are. 



HOW TO REMAIN YOUNG 

Steive always to be calm; be cheerful and 

sleep well ; 
Delight in music; much with little children 

dwell ; 
With moderation eat ; salute the opening day 
With glad " Good morning ! " be it rosy dawn 

or grey; 
Thy burdens bravely bear, yet make thou no 

delay 
To help a feeble brother all the rugged way; 
Think not too much of self, nor idly fret and 

grieve 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 185 

That thou must all earth's wealth and beauty 

some day leave; 
Trust thou in God; and in the holy footsteps 

tread 
Of those who live forever, though men count 

them dead. 
Wise as the serpent, and yet harmless as the 

dove — 
Be thou like Christ in heavenly patience and 

in love. 

HOPE 

Hope is a woman, 

Both wise and mild. 
In whose loving arms 

Nestles a child. 

OVER-FAITH 

Der Aberglaube ist die Poesie des Lebens. — Ooethe, 

The poem shall be forgotten. 

The singer shall remain; 
To trust the one were a folly, 

To doubt the other vain. 

The over-faith is a poem. 

Eternal faith a rock; 
The one shall die, and the other 

Abide the last day's shock. 



186 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



"HOW DO CHERRIES TASTE?" 



How do cherries taste? 

I cannot tell; 
But the children know, 

And birds as well. 



THE OPEN DOOR 

See, little bird, 

I open wide 
The door for thee; 

Thou mayest glide 
On waving wing, 

And gladly sing, 
And everywhere 
In the sweet air 

Of freedom dwell. 

I, too, little bird. 

Would scape my cage; 
Would fly abroad 

Ere frosty age 
Hath chilled my breath, 

And dimmed mine eye, 
And naught but death. 

In field and sky. 
Awaits my song. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 187 

PERSIS 1 

May 28th, 1874- 

The love-light in her starry eye, 

Upon her cheek the rose ; 
The laughter rippling in her voice 

Like evening wind that blows. 

Swift twinkling through the clover-fields, 

Her dancing feet made way ; 
They bid my inmost heart revive 

With song and roundelay. 

Her feet for joy the daisies kissed; 

The flowers, they blushed them red; 
No sweeter joy they sought than just 

To die beneath her tread. 

And I, like every flower afield, 
Could breathe but one request: 

The pressure of her lips to feel, 
And die upon her breast. 



1 This poem and the three that follow are inscribed by 
Dr. Marvin to his wife. 



188 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



PERSIS 

So Love at last shall take 
What once he gave; 

His is the bridal mom, 
And his the grave. 

Yet when two lives he makes 

To be as one, 
Death may not quite undo 

What Love hath done. 



TO PERSIS READING A SAD BOOK 

Our hearts no more 

Let us fret with foreboding; 

Of happier years 

Let us think with delight — 

Radiant with morn, 

And jocund with laughter; 

With never a sigh, 

Neither sadness nor tears. 

From the shelf let us take 
Glad pages, resounding 
With music and dancing. 
So shall we glide 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 189 



Through years that are left us 
Add not a sorrow 
To weakness and age. 

Through sunshine and shadow 
We've wandered, my darKng; 
Bright skies were above us, 
Ofttimes they were dun. 
Falls now the soft twilight, 
And night is approaching; 
Our pilgrimage ending, 
Sweet rest yet remains. 



PERSIS 

Like summer breeze her twinkling feet 
With music charm the flying hours; 

Her presence fills th' enchanted air 
With perfume of a thousand flowers. 



SIXTY 

Sixty — how swift the flying years go by! 
One scarce begins to live when he must die. 
Yet I have lived, though I should live no more, 
And I have found life sweet from stem to core. 



190 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 



VENUS LAMIA 

Fierce flames fell on your brow upturned 

To meet th' eternal Night; 
Immortal fire from heaven came down 

To make your dark eyes bright ; 
Your cruel limbs, your shapely form, 

The high gods wrought their best; 
They stamped with kisses soft and sweet 

Their image on your breast. 

They formed your subtle nerves and veins, 

And bade your pulses swell; 
They filled your breathing flesh with life, 

And shaped your spirit well. 
Then down the changing aisles of time 

With solemn chant they came, 
And to the sound of silver harps 

They syllabled your name. 



«0 LOVE, SURPASSING SWEET 
AND FAIR " 

O Love, surpassing sweet and fair, 
Thou art a flower by beauty fed; 

Thou fillest all our lives with light, 
And when thou diest we are dead. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 191 



YES 

I AM depressed when you are gone; 

When near 'tis all the same; 
Alike in darkness and at dawn, 

Love burns a constant flame. 
So if you come or if you go, 

I pine in sore distress ; 
For though you have not said me " No ! " 

You have not whispered " Yes ! " 

So here I languish day by day, 

All night I dream of you ; 
I sorrow when you're far away, 

And when you're with me too. 
Speak, then, the word I long to hear, 

And love for love confess : 
Though many words are sweet, my dear, 

The best of all is " Yes." 



CASTLES IN SPAIN 

Dear friend of other days no more, 
And friend of those that still remain, 

What boots our wealth of golden hours 
If all our castles are in Spain? 



192 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

PASSION 

Who tastes not Passion's burning cup, 
The wine of knowledge never drains : 

Like childhood's hours, his life is filled 
With infant's joys and infant's pains. 



« IF I LOVE YOU " 

If I love you. 

Should you care? 
Love is common 

Everywhere. 



TO A ROSE 

Go, rose, and rest 
On Delia's breast. 
No couch so blest 
Was ever pressed 
With such delight 
By day or night. 
Thou art a flower — 
Go, take thine hour; 
'Tis brief at best 
For such sweet rest. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 193 



I would that I 
Might, welcome, lie 
Where thou, sweet rose, 
Shalt soon repose. 



IN EVERY FIELD 

For want of rain the summer fields are dry, 
And some have taxed the mercy of the sky. 
Yet life in all lies hidden from the view: 
Be Thou the early shower and evening dew. 



MY HOUR 

If now this little hour I own, 
Sufficient power I ask alone, 
Well its high purpose to fulfil. 
With just and ever equal will. 



THE CANDLE OF THE LORD 

If God will light His candle in my heart. 
The candle on the altar may depart ; 
For in my breast behold that inner light 
Makes e'en the heavenly glory darker night. 



194 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

TRUST 

Naomi 

I CANNOT know if good or ill 

My future lot enfold; 
But, Lord, I rest in peace because 

Thou dost that future hold. 

And though at times my spirit fails, 

And weary seems the day, 
I grasp Thy hand and follow on 

Through all the lonely way. 

I care not if the road be rough. 
Or filled with fiowery ease; 

The hardest road with Thee is smooth; 
Without Thee none can please. 

I would not, Lord, apart from Thee 
Bright wealth or pleasure choose; 

And what I have, I pray Thee now, 
For Thine own glory use. 

Thus may I trust Thy holy Word, 
And follow Thy sweet will, 

Assured that in the darkest night 
Thou art beside me still. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 195 



THE DOWNWARD GAZE 

Behold the earth, if thou wouldst see 
The smile creative of the Lord; 

And, speechless, hearken to her voice. 

If thou wouldst hear the heavenly word. 

The downward gaze is upward still, 
The inward silence sacred song: 

The heart that waits in love for God 
Shall know He never tarries long. 



THE DAISY 

A LITTLE daisy 

White and gold 
In my garden grew; 
All the daisy knew 

Could be told 
In five lines or less; 
Yet the day I bless. 

That little flower. 

With heavenly dower. 
Sweet comfort brought to me. 

In its humble grace 

I beheld the face 



196 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



Of the Christ of old 
Who the birds and flowers 
Loved with tender love. 
Would He love me less 
Than He loved the lilies long ago? 
Little daisy, bright and fair, 
We may trust His constant care 
In field and garden everywhere. 



QUIET POWER 

Sehene and still, 
The mighty will 
Of God prevails 
Where striving fails. 
They win the day 
Who learn the way 
Of quiet power, 
And bide their hour. 
No work is wrought 
By anxious thought. 
Our foolish haste 
Makes greater waste. 
Life's golden prize 
Before him lies 
Who takes his time. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 197 



MADONNA 

Bare was the breast that cradled Christ, 
Pierced for the great world's sake. 

She said : " If men forsake not sin, 
This wounded heart must break." 

Then down from heaven a golden light 

In robes of music fell; 
A voice cried : " Thou art Queen of Heaven, 

But I am King of Hell." 

Seven silver flames her crown enclosed; 

Their pallid lights were shed 
Upon her face, to God upturned, 

Like starlight on the dead. 



FRIEND OF LONELY SOULS 

Lord Jesus, Friend of lonely souls 
That grief hath oft oppressed. 

Grant Thou the healing balm of peace — 
The calmness of Thy rest. 

Though earth and sense assume control. 

And we still wander far; 
Shine Thou upon our weary way, 

Thou bright and morning star. 



198 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



The gath'ring darkness, Lord, dispel, 

That veils the Love divine; 
And o'er the path from earth to Heaven 

In tender mercy shine. 

In Thee doth all our trust repose, 

In Thee our love abide; 
To Thee our hearts we open wide, 

Redeemer, Friend, and Guide. 



" LITTLE GRAIN OF DUST " 

O LITTLE grain of dust, or star, 

Or flower in green field! 
Through you I behold with wonder, 

God Himself revealed. 



Could I understand you wholly. 

Dust, or flower, or star, 
I should know your great Creator, 

Knowing what you are. 

Who made you grain of dust, or flower, 

Or bright star above, 
Made me, and taught me this to know: 

His holy name is Love. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 199 



All unconscious, still you serve Him, 

Silent, faithful, true; 
Dowered with human reason, may I 

Gladly serve Him too. 



PRAYER FOR STRENGTH ^ 

Eventide 

Through visions of the night and toils of day. 
Let no temptation's power my purpose sway ; 
But grant, dear Lord, Thy love's unchanging 

might, 
To keep my trembling faith and honor bright. 

Be hand and heart alert to do Thy will. 
Not with impatient haste, but calm and still; 
Thus when the long day's work for Thee is 

done. 
My waiting soul shall dread no setting sun. 

At last when softly fall the shadows deep. 
And sinks th' o'erweary brain to quiet sleep. 
From every anxious care and burden free, 
Let me for evermore abide with Thee. 



1 A hymn sung in many churches at evening service. 



200 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES 

" Beauty for ashes ! " 'tis exchange divine : 
For my poor life His larger life and free ; 

Peace after strife ; the glint of sunlit wave 
After raging tempest and storm-toss'd sea. 



INFINITE PRESENCE 

Alike Thou art in stillness and in storm ; 
In gentle winds that woo the evening star, 
And welcome the descending gloom of night 
With song of forests and the sounding sea. 
Thou art in flower and shrub; the running 

brook ; 
The restful silence of the purple hills ; 
And in the lowly meadows where the kine 
Repose at noon beneath th' o'erhanging boughs 
Of oak and elm. Afar Thou art and near — 
In distant worlds, and in th' trembling dewdrop 
That on the blushing rose doth hang a jewel 
Fit for Paradise above — too pure for earth. 
Thou art in ev'ry thought that stirs the soul 
Of saint or sage; in every noble deed; 
In woman's love ; and in the voices dear 
Of little children such as Jesus held 
In His pure arms, and pillowed on His breast. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 201 



And this poor world is beautiful because, 
Though sin and shame have marred its grace, 

it knows 
The mighty Love that changes and transforms. 



UNITED LIFE 

Suggested by " The Festival of Spring," by Jelalu 'd Din. 

Pure wine and water, when combined. 

May severed be no more; 
When from the chalice one you take, 

The other then you pour. 

And when within the flute you breathe, 

I breathe within the same ; 
One love have we, and one desire. 

One purpose, and one aim. 

I in Thy radiant being live ; 

Apart from Thee I fade. 
As clouds disperse in mist and rain 

O'er mountain, mere, and glade. 

Hush ! hush, my soul ! that voice I hear — 

At once both His and mine; 
In every word eternal love 

Is human and divine. 



202 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



CHRISTMAS 

Ring, ring, ye Christmas bells, good cheer! 

Pile high the yule-log on the hearth. 
The gladdest day in all the year 

Comes, filled with grateful song and mirth. 

Lo, Jesus Christ is born to-day ! 

Bend every knee, lift every voice ! 
He bore the great world's sins away; 

Let every heart rejoice, rejoice! 

Behold the burning sparks ascend — 
The hearth is all aglow with flame ! 

Each man is now his neighbor's friend: 
The feast, the story, and the game 

Make joyous every heart to-day, 

For hope, and peace, and kindly thought, 
Where once was only dark dismay, 

To all a Christmas cheer have brought. 



EXPERIENCE 

He only charts the heavens for me 
Who sails himself that upper sea; 
His teaching must from knowledge flow 
If he would have me with him go. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 20S 

AT THE TOMB OF SENANCOUR ^ 

^terniti, deviens mon agile! 

In Sevres before a tomb I stood and read, 

'Neath waving willow and an ilex there, 
The name of one whose aching heart breathed 
out 
With dying breath this last and bitter 
prayer : 
" Be thou, Eternity, my refuge ! " None 

Was there for thee but silence and the night : 
And as I mused, a bird flew swiftly by, 

God's sunlight flashing from its pinions 
bright. 

Of Obermann's enchanted page I thought, 
The story of thy lonely pilgrim days ; 

I pondered if Eternity at last 

Were welcome goal of thy sad, wand'ring 
ways. 

1 Etienne Pivert de Senancour, author of " Obermann " 
and " Meditations Libres d^un Solitaire Inconnu," was 
born in 1770. He followed the career of a man of letters, 
but met with little success. His writings were known to 
only a few choice spirits who were charmed by his elo- 
quence and by the deep yet tender melancholy of his 
thought and feeling. He died, a disappointed old man, 
in 1846, requesting that over his grave might be in- 
scribed the words: *' tlternit6, deviens mon asile!" 



204 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

And as I mused, far up a leafy bough 

The bird sang sweetly of great love and 
hope; 
The air was fragrant with the breath of flow- 
ers, — 
The wild red rose and purple heliotrope, 

Senancour, there is a refuge here 

For earthly sorrow and our wild unrest ! 
The hill, the forest, and the running brook 

Invite repose on Nature's soothing breast; 
And when our little selves we do forget 

In the bright world of beauty God hath made. 
Scant power hath human ill the heart to vex. 

Nor is there boding woe to make afraid. 

Far from the crowded city's wildering maze 

God meets us in the flight of singing birds ; 
His voice is in the winds and sounding sea. 

And in the lowing of the peaceful herds. 
The simple joys of rural life have grace 

To still the tumult of our care and doubt ; 
From artificial thoughts our life allure. 

And those poor pleasures we might do 
without. 

This lesson from thy lonely tomb I learn, 
Thou gifted son of genius and despair: 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 205 



'Tis only when our sense of self we lose, 

As well we lose our burden and our care. 
All Nature thrills with music and with song 
When we have ears to catch the heavenly 
strain ; 
And when with love our hearts are warm and 
true, 
We know He made us not to live in vain. 



COMRADESHIP 

Drifts a great sorrow like a lonely cloud. 
Drives hence the light, and darkens all the air ; 

But in the smile of one true-hearted friend 
Revives my courage and dissolves my care. 

Your helpful hand, good comrade, reach me 
now; 
Once more the sound of your glad voice I 
hear : 
The vision clears ; my strength returns again ; 
And rosy morn illumes the land and mere. 

One trusted friend with loyal heart and free 
I hold a match for ruthless time and fate ; 

A deathless fellowship of comrade-souls 

Is nobler wealth than this poor world's estate. 



206 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 
MADISON CAWEIN ^ 

Obit MDCCCCXIV, 

Why fell so swift the lonely night, 
Where beauty loved to dwell? 

We listened for the song, and heard, 
On sighing breeze, the knell 

That crushed our rising hope, and wrapt 

The heart in silent gloom. 
The laurel for thy brow we wreathed. 

Now rests upon thy tomb. 

When last thy welcome voice we heard 

In kindly speech and wise, 
Both art and nature spake through thee 

In marvel and surprise. 

Ah ! little then we dreamed how soon 
Both word and song should cease ; 

Upon thy lips the silence fall. 
And o'er thee endless peace. 

1 Madison J. Cawein, who died in 1914 at his home in 
Louisville, Kentucky, was, as has been pointed out, " es- 
sentially the poet of idealism and pagan beauty." He is 
as well, in a pagan sense, the poet of nature. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 207 



No more thy song shall sound afar ; 

The harp is hushed for aye ; 
From star-lit heights the splendor fades, 

The glory from the day. 

Nay ; 'tis not so : thy name shall live 
In hearts that mourn thy fate ; 

For they shall hold, to mem'ry dear, 
Thy songs inviolate. 

We shall rejoice those songs to hear — 
Clear, sweet, serene, and free — 

O'er hill and dale and running stream. 
In flower and shrub and tree. 

Farewell ! sweet singer of such songs 
As make our hearts rejoice; 

The music of thy lines still sounds, 
Though not thy living voice, 

For art survives the fleeting day, 

Endures when we decline — 
A thing not wholly of this earth, 

O'er all supreme, divine. 

And other ears than ours shall drink. 
Alike 'neath palm and pine. 



208 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



The lyric laughter of thy song, 
The heart's pure, balmy wine. 

Thus mingled are our tears with joy. 
And light with darkness, too ; 

For us remain thy songs, though we 
The singer bid adieu. 

Both art and nature still remain 

The poet's land of song ; 
And he to both, with loving heart. 

Must evermore belong. 



THE LION OF LUCERNE 

With equal courage soldier and commander 
fell; 
Why were not all recorded name by name ? 
The stone was ample, and the artist's skill was 
there 
To give them, great and small, to deathless 
fame. 

Alas, how meagre Is the gratitude we yield 
To humble men who royal service give! 

We little care that silent worth unhonored die. 
If rank and title, crowned with glory, live. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 209 



REALITY 

We seldom see a smokeless flame, 
Nor evil deed that hath no shame; 
There need be neither search nor quiz ; 
Man seems at length the man he is. 



THE LAND OF GOLDEN STARS 

O JEWELED land of golden stars ! 

O free-born land and true! 
My heart with joy and pride turns back, 

And longs to be with you. 

Once more your happy shore I'd tread, 
Where thought and speech are free: 

Where floats the flag by Honor bless'd, 
Beyond the rolling sea. 

The long-ago is well enough, 

And empires dim with age. 
But hope and faith and years to come 

My grateful heart engage. 

Dear land, of all great lands the best, 
What e'er the clime may be. 



210 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Forevermore your trust hold fast 
Till all the world goes free. 

Till Rhine and Rhone and Tiber-stream, 
And castled cliffs that rise 

In rains gray with hoary age 
To greet these alien skies, 

The light of dawning day shall view 

From o'er the stormy sea, 
And men their fetters fling afar, 

To walk the glad earth free. 

O jeweled land of golden stars ! 

O free-born land and true ! 
Your flag my heart leaps up to see — ' 

The red, the white, and blue. 



TWO LITTLE ANGELS 

Two little angels, Joe and blue-eyed Jane : 
Lord, clip their wings — I fear they'll fly 
away. 
Heaven needs them not, but oh, my need is 
great ! 
Their laughter turns my night to day. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 211 

AMERICA 

1870 

My Fatherland, thy hills I love, 

Thy noble rivers swift and deep, 
Thy meadows green, and valleys rich, 

Where browse the peaceful, meek-eyed sheep ; 
I love the fragrant flowers that bloom 

On every wayside where I roam: 
My Fatherland! my Fatherland! 

My ever dear and happy home ! 

I love the land that gave me birth. 

Where early by my mother's knee 
My childhood's prayer I learned to lisp. 

And learned as well God's love to see 
In bird, and flower, and leafy bough. 

In summer shower and winter snow ; 
The land by Pilgrim feet made dear; 

The land they hallowed long ago. 

I weary of the pomps of earth, 

The gauds and glories of the world. 
The kingly splendors, kingly power, 

And flags by tyrant hands unfurled; 
I would forever gladly dwell 

Where floats the starry flag above, 
And in my Fatherland abide — 

The land, the land, the land I love. 



212 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



BOOKS 

Our friends, as years advance, depart, 

But noble books remain ; 
In them the blessed dead return 

To dwell with us again. 



POETRY 

When I am dead, good friend of mine, 
In each of my cold hands let be 

Nor rose, nor leaf, but some dear book 
Of sweet and priceless poesy. 



SPINOZA 

Schleiermacher: " Beden iiher die Religion" 

A LOCK of hair to good Spinoza's manes ! 

The spirit of the world infused his own ; 
He saw the boundless universe instinct 

With love, and yet, alas ! he dwelt alone. 
Filled with divine and happy thought, his mind 

Took little heed of human praise or blame ; 
Disciples he had none, yet deathless glory 

Crowned with her laurel his immortal name. 



I 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 213 



ON THE DESERT 

O'er desert drear the silent stars 

Salute the evening shade ; 
The tent is pitched, the meal prepared, 

The quiet prayer is made. 

The camel's tinkling bells are heard ; 

With Arab songs they blend, 
As slumber o'er the drowsy lid 

Doth in soft dreams descend. 

His rug the pilgrim spreads for rest, 
No anxious thoughts molest; 

The voice of Allah whispers low. 
It whispers in his breast. 

Oh, far away the mosque-lamp burns 
On Khartoom's lonely wall, 

And here of home he fondly dreams, 
While round the shadows fall. 

But far or near 'tis all the same, 

Since Allah doth enfold 
Alike the trackless desert-sand. 

The jungle, and the wold. 

Now Bilma fades from sight away, 
As fade the stars at dawn ; 



214 THE TOP OF THE WINE- JAR 



And so ere long from all the world 
Shall heart and mind be drawn. 

Alone 'mid stillness vast, profound, 
Three thousand miles of sand. 

In one unbroken solitude. 
From east to west expand. 

With weary foot, from day to day. 

The caravan goes by 
To where Morocco's walls appear, 

The shades of Atlas lie. 

No more shall fierce siroccos fly 
With death beneath their wings. 

For every ambling camel's stride 
The pilgrim homeward brings 

To where the gentle breezes blow 

On heated brow again, 
And all along the Draha's shore 

Is heard the welcome rain. 

Farewell, Tisheet! farewell, Wadan! 

The journey ends in rest. 
And Allah's pilgrim evermore 

Of all men is most blest. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 215 



A ROSE FOR THE LIVING 

The flowers that deck the coffin-lid, 
The dead no pleasure give ; 

But oh! the joy a rose may bring 
To one who still doth live. 



VANITY 

Lo! I have suffered deeply 

In passion and in pain; 
The fruits of life have tasted, 

I will not taste again. 
Where sang the birds in summer, 

Where bloomed the flowers in June, 
The winter snows are drifting 

Beneath the silver moon. 

The golden lights are darkened. 

The harp's sweet sounds are o'er, 
The singing times are ended — 

They will return no more. 
The flowers were bruised in anger, 

The grapes were crushed in vain. 
There came no wine of laughter 

From out the fruit of pain. 



216 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



TRANSCENDENTALISM 

A DARK abyss where nothing is, 
Adown whose silent spaces deep, 

From naught to naught, with wild delight, 
The modern saint and sibyl leap. 



MATERIALISM 

A FAITH that grasps the outer shell, 
But never seeks for hidden fruit; 

And to explain the soul of song, 

Would weigh and measure pipe and lute. 



TRUTH 

There danger dwells where dwells not Truth ; 
Nor gold, nor gems, nor rosy youth 
Shall friendly be when she hath fled; 
The soul that knows her not is dead. 



THE REACTIONARY 

His soul he feeds on bread 
That others leave; 

His creed is what the dead 
Did once believe. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 217 



THE KAISER'S SOLILOQUY 

I AM great Caesar, and the world 
Beneath my booted foot lies curled ; 
The whole cursed human race I hate, 
For mine is power, and I am Fate. 

None may my mighty sway resist — 
Sway of the sword and mailed fist ; 
i^'or whoso'er I will I crush. 
Let blood from gaping wounds now gush 

And anguish fill the wide, wide world. 
No banner but mine own, unfurled, 
Shall float the blue of heaven above ; 
I have no mercy and I have no love. 

All lands I hate that spurn my power ; 
My royal eagles shall devour 
Both young and old, nor woman spare; 
Let him who dare resist beware. 

Would England rule the rolling wave? 
She shall be evermore my slave. 
Would France her happy homes protect ? 
Her homes and temples shall be wrecked. 

The sword and flame shall them devour 
In this my fortune and mine hour. 



218 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



Would Belgium, meanest of my foes, 
Her foolish tale of woe disclose? 

Let her then show her craven shape, 
My vengeance she shall not escape. 
And that cursed land across the sea — 
She, too, shall bend the suppliant knee. 

The land of Washington I hate, 
Still worse shall be her untoward fate; 
Her flag wide flung to every breeze. 
She shall no more my wrath appease. 

Her liberty I loath, despise; 
O'er all my towering throne shall rise. 
Alone the Kaiser-flag, unfurled. 
Proclaims me Caesar of the world. 



DANTE AT CORVO ^ 

His hand the Benedictine laid 

Upon the brow of him 
Who craved alone the gift of peace, 

With weary mind and limb. 

1 It is recorded that Dante, wandering over Italy, 
stopped at a monastery, where he was blessed by one of 
the friars who asked him what he sought. The poet an- 
swered, "Peace." 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 219 

And as beneath sweet Corvo's shade 

The stranger sank to rest, 
The droning friars guessed not who 

Preferred that strange request. 

'Twas not within their power to give 

The boon he fondly sought — 
Peace, gentle peace, where grief 

Her bitter work had wrought. 

War he had waged till every nerve 

Within him burned like fire; 
They knew not Heaven and Hell had joined, 

That stranger to inspire ; 

Nor that the world should long revere, 

Beyond all sense of wrong, 
In him the master of immortal verse. 

The pride of Tuscan song; 

That he should live, divinely clear, 

Serene, and strong, and brave, 
When their poor songs, to memory lost. 

Sleep with them in the grave. 

Ah, little dreamed they that brief night 

Of fame that should abide. 
That 'neath their sacred roof-tree slept 

Their country's hope and pride. 



220 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

They only thought a stranger craved 
What they could not bestow — 

Peace, that sweet gift a whole world seeks, 
And few may ever know. 

Great master of immortal song, 

Whose dust Ravenna holds, 
Death brought thee what she hath for all — 

The peace that Life withholds. 



II 

WIT AND HUMOR 



J 



CHURCH OF THE HOLY FURBELOWS 

There was a preacher went to town 

To get a wealthy church ; 
The country folk to whom he preached 

Had left him in the lurch. 

He was a blooming candidate 
With sermons by the score — 

Sermons to make you laugh and weep, 
And some to make you snore. 

He found at last a wealthy church 
Where sinners come to pray 

That all their sins may be forgiven, 
But never put away; 

Where ladies, clad in gorgeous robes. 

Sweep up the marble aisle ; 
And Croesus comes to praise the Lord 

For his big golden pile. 

The elders are a saintly lot. 
As all the world doth know ; 

There's Mr. Mammon, Mr. Pence, 
Old Usufruct, and Blow. 
223 



224 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



The last of these, he cornered grain, 
And made the market wild ; 

In yonder pew he kneels in prayer 
Just like a little child. 



Three bankers and a senator 

Are in the session there: 
I wonder what they're thinking of — 

They seem engaged in prayer. 

The while I ponder on the scene 
Which every Sunday brings, 

I wonder is it church of God, 
Or of the money-kings. 

Old Mrs. Flumadiddle, too. 

Is every Sunday there; 
And by her side her daughter sits. 

So haughty and so fair. 

Her coachman dozes on the box 
While she's engaged in prayer ; 

His earthly and his heavenly state 
Are none of her affair. 

The preacher was the man for them, 
His preaching pleased them all ; 



WIT AND HUMOR 225 

So Mr. Pence, he moved that they 
Negotiate a call. 

Some twenty thousand dollars then 

They voted to disperse ; 
For they were called the richest church 

In all the universe. 

" Our church, it has," said Mrs. Bills, 
" The cream of all the place." 

" Bon ton,'' said Flora Pedigree ; 
" We hold both king and ace." 

" I like the preacher," sighed Miss Sweet, 

" His sermons are so fine ; 
He's good at cards, will sometimes dance, 

And likes a glass of wine. 

*' He never says a word that grates 

On any gentle ear ; 
He'll not disturb our social round, — 

We've not a thing to fear." 

I heard Miss Dazzlestones declare 

Religion was a bore, 
But his religion was au fait, — 

She only longed for more. 



226 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Oh, when the choir the anthem give 

(The people never sing) : 
" Let all the earth resound with praise, 

And all their worship bring," 

You hear the great soprano's voice, 

The finest tenor out; 
It's grand, although you may not know 

Just what it's all about. 

The basso has a heavenly voice, 

Though not a heavenly life; 
He's over fond, 'tis whispered low, 

Of a rich neighbor's wife. 

'Tis whispered, too, his nights he spends 
Where no clean man may be; 

But then of heaven and things like that 
He sings so well, you see. 

'Twould never do that voice to lose 

From out the organ-loft; 
The world would laugh, and whisper, 
" Prude," 

Or call the session " soft." 

The pastor says, and he knows best. 
The thing that should be said : 



WIT AND HUMOR 227 

" Our basso is a little wild, — 
Just what we call * misled.' " 

" More sinned against than sinning," sighs 

Miss Glorygusher, fair, 
" God hates all sin of every kind, 

But will the sinner spare." 

The tenor is a lovely man, 

Such soft and pleading eyes ; 
Around your soul he puts his arms 

And with it upward flies. 

On Friday night there is, I hear, 

A meeting held for prayer 
Of which old Deacon Dull has charge, — 

He's always in the chair. 

He says the same thing o'er and o'er, 

He moans a prayer, and then 
They all sit up and feel relieved 

When he drones out, " Amen." 

You see he was converted once 

When he was very young; 
And, more's the pity, he grew up 

The Methodists among. 



228 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



But no one minds his senile ways, 

There's use enough for him; 
'Most every church must have some soul 

That's just a little grim. 

Now if the gospel you desire 

Done up in fancy style, 
And wish to see the fashions, too. 

And men who've made their pile, 

Attend on Sunday morning, Sir, 

(In evening no one goes) 
The Church ('tis Mary Rosebud's choice) 

Of Holy Furbelows. 



THE TEST OF LOVE 

His lady fair a lover once reproved, 

For she had fondly kissed another swain. 
" I do deny," right stoutly she averred, 

" That he kissed me and I kissed him again." 
" Not so ? not so ? " the lover cried. " I know 

Because I saw, 'twas not what I had heard." 
Hot was the lady's speech : " You love me 
not. 

Since you believe your eyes and not my 
word." 



WIT AND HUMOR 229 

YE BALLAD OF A WOEFUL 
PUBLISHER 

Wherein is disclosed how ye Stebbins that did live in 
ye wicked city of Boston by a strange inadvertence did 
print a book by ye most excellent poet Marvin of Al- 
bany-town up-side-down, and did thereby destroy ye 
said poet's most worthy life, and his own puissance in ye 
making of books. 

Now Stebbins was a gentleman 

Who wore a silk cravat; 
He swung a dandy cane around, 

And donned a Sunday hat. 

He bought a watch with fob and chain, 

A scarf-pin fine and rare. 
And in a costly auto, too, 

He traveled everywhere. 

For printing books had made him rich 

As ever man could be ; 
His head turned round, and round, and round, 

As all the world could see. 

Ah, sad the tale I now relate 

Of all his great renown, 
For once a book, by accident. 

He printed up-side-down. 



230 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

That book to read one had to stand 

Long hours upon his head, 
Till like a top his brain revolved, 

And from his nose he bled. 

Now all the men who handled books, 

In city or in town, 
Did curse the volume day and night, 

And on the printer frown. 

For all their counters dripped with blood, 

While dying men lay round ; 
The clerks in briny tears were bathed, 

And wrapped in grief profound. 

They cursed young Stebbins up and down, 
They cursed him right and left. 

For soon of all their customers 
Those traders were bereft. 

A book that's printed up-side-down 

Must up-side-down be read, 
And those who read, with spurts of blood 

Must soon themselves be red. 

Young Stebbins for that book they sued, 
They robbed him of his gain, 



WIT AND HUMOR 231 

They took his silk cravat away, 
His Sunday hat and cane. 

He swore it was no fault of his 

The book was printed so; 
A reader of his proof, he said, 

Had laid his fortune low. 

'Twas Marvin's book, the papers said. 

That Stebbins up-side-down 
Had printed by an accident, 

In far-off Boston-town. 

No word of wrath did Marvin breathe, 

Though standing on his head ; 
The truth to tell, the reason was 

Because he too was dead. 

Ye authors all, a lesson learn 

From Stebbins' sad collapse : 
Trust not to proofs that only show 

A " may be " or " perhaps." 

Be sure that every change is made 

In adverb and in noun. 
Lest when your book is done, you find 

'Tis printed up-side-down. 



232 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



No man will ever kindly take 

To standing on his head, 
However much his brain be turned, 

His gentle nose be bled. 

There was a man whose nose, they say. 

Held insufficient gore, 
But when he saw dead Marvin's book 

The blood began to pour. 

At first, just like " a hidden brook 

In leafy month of June," 
From both his nostrils down it came,, 

" Singing a quiet tune ; " 

But when the gentle Marvin's book 

Again he did behold, 
The torrent rose with mighty force. 

And down his cheeks it rolled. 



Alas ! alas ! my Marvin dear — 
Both man and book are dead: 

The one is printed up-side-down, 
The other stands on head. 



WIT AND HUMOR 2SS 



THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER 

He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster. 

— James I, of England, 

To Boston-town one day I fared, 

My publisher to see; 
And in these lines I do relate 

The grief that came to me. 



For when to that great town I came, 
Young Stebbins was quite well. 

But when I left he was defunct, 
As this sad tale doth tell. 



" We'll lunch," said he, with merry heart, 
" And view the new Club House ; ^ 

The oysters are right famous there, 
And so are quail and grouse. 

" And then from cellar up to roof, 

The building we'll inspect ; 
And, if it please you, then, perhaps, 

We'll meet the architect." ^ 



1 The Boston City Club. 

2 The commodious and in many ways attractive build- 
ing was constructed by the well-known firm of archi- 
tects, Newhall and Blevins. 



2S4 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



A waiter then he called, and said, 
" Bring oysters on half-shell " ; 

And then with zest he started in 
A story for to tell. 

An oyster with his fork he speared ; 

The creature gave a squeal ; 
Quoth Stebbins, " Why, they told me that 

An oyster could not feel." 

Up rose that oyster poised on tail. 

And waved his shell about ; 
The guests in terror fled the room, 

The waiters all cleared out. 

Loud roared the bivalve, wild with rage, 

" I'd like to pepper you ; 
In both your eyes squeeze lemon-juice, 

And thus obstruct your view." 

Oh, how that oyster wriggled then 

From right to left his tail ; 
Himself he puffed until he seemed 

A spermaceti whale. 

With that, the creature pitched his shell 
Away without a fear. 



WIT AND HUMOR 235 



And in a towering fury seized 
Young Stebbins by the ear. 

That publisher he laid out flat 

Upon an ample dish; 
The pepper-box he brandished then ; 

He grasped the horseradish. 

My friend to help with haste I ran ; 

The irate oyster smiled; 
He seized me by the trousers-seat 

As I had been a child ; 

He spun me like a top in air — 
Both earth and sky went black, 

And round I seemed to circle through 
A jeering zodiac, 

From dull Aquarius all the way 

To Pices and the goat, 
While with his shell my fundament 

The rutliless oyster smote. 

Sad is the tale I here relate ; 

With murder 'tis replete ; 
That oyster grabbed my publisher, 

And ate him head and feet. 



2S6 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



So now no publisher I have ; 

Mj books unprinted lie ; 
And naught to comfort me remains 

But gin and some old rye. 

That oyster tramped the dining-room ; 

From end to end he went ; 
Crustaceous curses shook the walls, 

With wrath the air was rent. 

The floor he slapped with his great shell 
Till you could hear the sound, 

Like wild explosions fierce and vast, 
Twice fifty miles around. 

From Beacon Street the panic spread 

Along the Common then ; 
With frightened women Goodspeed's shop ' 

Was filled, and with scared men. 

Full soon the police they did come. 

On foot, and some on horse ; 
With wounded men the street was filled ; 

The dead were there, of course. 

3 A famous old bookshop on Park Street facing the 
Common in Boston, established many years ago by Mr. 
C. E. Goodspeed. Like the Old Corner Book Shop of 
early days, in the same city, it became the gathering place 
for men of literary and antiquarian tastes and pursuits. 



WIT AND HUMOR 237 



Oh, 'twas a mighty oyster that 

The dining room did tread, 
Upsetting dishes, knives, and forks, 

Wine-jellies, and corn-bread. 

Some shrimp from off a plate he drove, 

And then from off a chair ; 
" You fools ! " he cried, " you'll eaten be 

If you remain long there." 

He kicked a lobster down the stairs ; 

" Run for your life," he said ; 
" So soon as dinner-time comes round, 

You'll be among the dead." 

An infant clam he bravely seized, 
And bore it down the stairs; 

Behind him ran a guinea-fowl, 
A shad, and two small hares. 

Three crabs were weeping on a plate, 

Rolled up in mayonnaise. 
And one unto the other said: 

" Alas ! the happy days 

" When I beneath a summer sea 
My graceful claws did sport. 

And lady crabs, in love with me. 
Said I was * just the sort 



238 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

" ' Of dandy crab to fascinate 

The bon ton of the sea — 
A fine crustacean, full of life, 

And gay as crab could be.' " 

No sooner had the crab discoursed 

In tender lines and sad, 
Than cried the oyster, " Now, Sir Crab, 

Thy fate doth- drive me mad. 

" I've swallowed Stebbins, boots and all, 

I'll swallow Marvin too ; 
That rascal thought to gulp me down 

In a rich oyster-stew. 

" Now rise. Sir Crab, and haste away 
To where the chef reclines ; 

We'll eat that chef, with tartar sauce, 
And drink his choicest wines." 

Then up the crab with joy did leap. 

He with the oyster sped ; 
They crunched the chef's old bones awhile, 

And then pronounced him dead. 

And now they call that bivalve. Sir, 

The Washington of shells, 
For in his brave and dauntless pulp 

A hero's spirit dwells. 



WIT AND HUMOR 239 



A NEW ENGLAND HOUSEWIFE 

Through all her life 'twas dust and only dust 
her thought engaged; 
Some dust was real, but more her nimble mind 
supplied ; 
The poet's art she scorned, the painter's skill 
despised ; 
For dust she lived, and, dying, " Dust to 
dust 1 " she cried. 



EPITAPH 

FOR A NEW YORK PUBLISHER 

Pause, stranger; drop a sympathetic tear; 

An honest publisher reposes here. 

In life he oft his authors smote. 

And paid himself from what they wrote. 

Their sorrows and his joys are o'er. 

For he will never publish more. 

Grow, flowers of Spring, above his grave; 

Ye weeping willows, o'er him wave. 

He's gone forevermore to dwell 

With halos, harps, and Gabriel. 



Ill 

TRANSLATIONS 



TO THE HUSBANDMAN 

Sown are the golden seeds in the smooth furrow, 

And covered from view ; 
Deeper furrows some day shall thy bones con- 
ceal, 

And under one blue 
Of the heavens over-hanging, the ploughman 

Shall gather food for the living: 

Hope from even the tomb vanishes never; 

New life the furrows are giving. 

Goethe 



THE WHISTLING DAUGHTER 

Whistle, my dearest daughter, and I will give 

thee a cow. 
Ah, no ! my beloved mother, I cannot whistle 

now — 

Oh, I cannot whistle ; 
Ah, no ! my mouth it puckers so. 

Whistle, my charming daughter, and I will give 

thee a horse. 
Mother, I never whistled, and I could not now, 

of course — 

Oh, I cannot whistle ; 

Ah, no ! my mouth it puckers so. 
243 



244 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 

Whistle, my gentle daughter, and I will give 

thee a sheep. 
Mother, I cannot whistle, so the creature you 

may keep — 

Oh, I cannot whistle ; 
Ah, no ! my mouth it puckers so. 

Whistle, my lovely daughter, and I will give thee 

a man. 
Mother, I never whistled, tut I know right well 
I can — 

Whistle! whistle! whistle! 
And so the whistling soon began. 

Erom the Dutch 



A LOVER'S WISH 

O THAT I were an evening breeze ! 

I'd kiss my lady's trembling breast ; 
Wiili love her every wish I'd please, 

And soothe her heart in dreams to rest. 



O that I were a fragrant flower 

Her gentle hand had softly pressed ! 

I'd give my life for one glad hour 
Of sweet repose on her dear breast. 

Feom the Latin" 



TRANSLATIONS 245 

HUMANITY 

Unnumbered years the hoary earth 
Her countless nations hath enrolled. 

And holocausts to gods hath raised 
From blood-red altars manifold. 



And years to come the raptured saint 
To God shall other altars rear, 

And sorrow still shall come and go, 
And joy the human heart shall cheer. 



It blinds me not ! With love content. 
The ceaseless strife of Time I see ; 

While changing empires rise and fall. 
Still onward moves Humanity. 

No day hath ever dawned, I know. 

That gladdened not one lonely breast ; 

Nor Spring hath followed Winter drear 
But with a song the world it blessed. 

From out the ruddy wine, I know, 
The vast, creative thoughts arise ; 

And in a woman's loving kiss 
A noble fount of vigor lies. 



246 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



Where'er we go the heavens, I know, 

They frown with rage, or smile with joy ; 

In every zone the stars serene 

Some loving eye with faith employ. 

So day by day and night by night 

One thought doth every heart possess ; 

Where'er on earth mine eyes are turned 
A brother's loyal hand I press. 

A link of that great chain which binds 

The future to the past am I ; 
From out the struggling surge I snatch 

The jewel of Humanity. 

KiNKEL 



A HAPPY LOT 

How pleasant is my earthly lot, — 

To watch the fishers in the bay. 
And see them haul their nets ashore, 

Or speed their white sails far away. 
Here by the sounding sea I'd dwell. 

The friend of nature and of man. 
Enjoy the world from mom till eve, 

And do the little good I can. 

From the Japanese 



TRANSLATIONS 247 



LAIS DEDICATES HER MIRROR TO 
VENUS 1 

Once at Greece proud Lais mocked, 

With gay lovers laughed all day; 
Now these lovers come no more, 

Mirth and song are passed away. 
Venus, take this glass from me. 

Since I old and wrinkled grow; 
W^hat I am I would not see. 

What I shall be would not know. 

Plato the Philosopher 

1 September 1, 1913. Came upon Prior's translation 
of Plato's lines on Lais in her old age, dedicating her 
mirror to Venus. Prior does not say that it was Lais 
who made the dedication; he calls her " a lady," and we 
must go to the Greek to discover her identity. He de- 
scribes her mirror as a " looking glass," though it was, 
doubtless, a burnished metal mirror such as women in 
Rome used at that time. What most interests me in this 
connection is the fact that some years ago I came upon 
Plato's lines when I had not yet seen Prior's version. I 
translated the Greek lines in their entirety, and the trans- 
lation was published in my " Flowers of Song from 
Many Lands." Prior translated only the first four lines; 
but Austin Dobson says that they are so good that 
" Landor might have been pleased to sign them." It 
becomes me to be modest, for I am a fellow translator. 
Below is Prior's version: 

" Venus, take my votive glass. 

Since I am not what I was; 

What from this day I shall be, 

Venus, let me never see." 

— Marvin's "Free Lance" 



248 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



FAITH 

Be like the little bird 

That for an instant stays 

Upon the topmost bough : 

The branch beneath him sways, 

But undisturbed he sings, 
All conscious of his wings. 

Victor Hugo 



SONG OF THE WANDERING KNIGHT 

My ornaments are sword and spear. 
War is my pleasure near and far. 

My bed the cold green turf alone, 

My quenchless lamp yon trembling star. 

Long are my journeys through the day, 
Brief are my slumbers in the night ; 

Thy spirit haunts me as I go ; 
I kiss thy token with delight. 

From land to land I swiftly ride, 

And ever sail from sea to sea ; 
And trust, fair lady, fate some day 

May bid these knightly lips kiss thee. 

Fbom the Spanish 



TRANSLATIONS ^49 



THE UNITY OF FAITH 

KiNE are of divers colors, but they all milk the 

same; 
Altar flowers are not alike, but worship is one 

flame; 
Systems of faith may diff^er with every changing 

zone. 
But God, unchanging ever, remaineth God alone. 

Vemana 



THE WORDS OF THE WISE ARE FEW 

Of all the lands where mighty forests grow, 
But few that bear the sandalwood I know ; 
In every clime the wise and good I view. 
And yet, alas ! their golden words are few. 

Saskya Pakdita 



THE FOOL'S BEARD 

Down flows his beard upon his chest, 
It hides the whole of his large vest ; 
Of him long years ago 't was writ : 
" Who hath much hair hath little wit." 

Modern Greek 



250 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



THE FOOL'S FLIGHT 

He fled from the beating rain without, 
And sat down under the waterspout. 

From the Arabic 



THE PALM 

Dreams on the lonely height 

A pine tree clad in snow; 
Around it icy winds 

In wild confusion blow : — 

Dreams of a graceful palm 

In the far southern land, 

In silent solitude, 

'Mid wastes of burning sand. 

Heine 

GOOD NIGHT 

Good night ! Good night ! 

Now fades the light; 

But flames above 

God's holy love, 

And all is bright. 

Good night ! Good night ! 

Victor Hugo 



TRANSLATIONS 251 



THE HOUSE OF GOD 

Prone upon the earth in prayer the weary Na- 

nac fell, 
Filled with all blessed thoughts of God; 
Turned toward the sacred Mecca were his 

dusty feet, 
And rested on the soft green sod. 
When, lo ! there passed a saintly Moslem priest 

that way. 
And cried, " Base unbeliever, dost thou dare to 

pray. 
Thy graceless feet extended toward God's city 

fair?" 
But Nanac thus made answer, " Is not every- 
where 
God's city? Find, if thou canst, the accursed 

spot 

Where, crowned with deathless praise. His holy 

house is not ! " 

From the Peesian 



SCANT HOSPITALITY 

God bless the man and spare him grief 
Who kindly makes his visit brief. 

From the Arabic 



252 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



THE FAIREST THING ^ 

The fairest thing in all the world some say 
That mighty horsemen are, — a noble host ; 

And others judge it is a force of foot; 

Still more of armed ships would make their 
boast. 

But, as for me, I hold the one beloved, 
My soul's desire, is fairest of them all. 

To make this plain no task it is, I think : 

Helen her heart obeyed at Love's strong call. 

The man who ruined Troy she swiftly chose, — 
Nor child, nor parent gave her such delight : 

One burning love all other loves consumed. 
So fierce the flame, so quenchless, and so 
bright. 

Pliant is woman when her nearer loves 

Surrendered are, and then forgotten quite. 

Even so, my Anactoria, dear. 

When with you dwells your heart's supreme 
delight, 

1 Translated from a recently discovered fragment of a 
poem by Sappho. Beyond doubt two stanzas at the very 
least are wanting in the papyrus. The last two lines in 
the Greek as given by Mr. Edmonds are conjectural. — 
"Fireside Papers.'* 



TRANSLATIONS 253 

When her sweet voice hath tender power to 
charm, 
Her lightest footfall and her beaming face, — 
These I'd rather have than chariots bright. 
And armed troops the Lydian land doth 
grace. 

I know men have not in this world the best, 
Yet pray to share what once was shared, 
for so 
'Tis better far than to forget and lose 

The flower of love that blooms for us below. 

Sappho. 



DEDICATIONS 



TO 

MY BELOVED WIFE 

I DEDICATE THESE PAGES, BECAUSE 

ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THEM, AND MUCH OP 

WHATEVER IS GOOD IN THEIR AUTHOR 

COMES OF HER TENDER AND PURE 

LOVE. AND IS DUE TO HER 

DEAR COMPANIONSHIP 



These pages are dedicated with tender love 
and great gladness of heart to my dear wife 

PERSIS 

When gaily o'er the fields she tripped. 
The flowers they burst aflame; 

My heart, that was a worthless weed, 
A crimson rose became. 



258 THE TOP OF THE WINE-JAR 



TO 

MY DEAR WIFE 

IN WHOSE PURE LOVE AND NOBLE COMPANIONSHIP 

I HAVE FOUND GLADNESS OF LIFE 

AND INSPIRATION FOR LABOR 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



TO 
THE MEMBERS OP 

THE AUTHORS CLUB 

OP NEW YORK 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF 

AMBROSIAL NIGHTS 

THESE QUATRAINS ARE DEDICATED 



